Interview with Clarisse d’Arcimoles.

Clarisse d’Arcimoles is a photographer and artist living in London. Underlying her portraits, installations and photographs is a humanity, compassion and intimacy that are forged through her thorough excavation of individual’s lives. The resulting images can be comic but are spliced through with a deep sadness. She depicts the vulnerability and transience of human life by jumping backward and forward through memories and bending and manipulating the continuous string of time.

Originally from France, she moved to London when she was 19 to study Set design and Performance at Central St Martin’s. She took a photography MA and her resulting work is a hybrid of the two mediums. This is crystallised in her series Un-Possible Retour, which shows mimetic portraits of members of her family. She delved into her old family photo albums, and exactly recreates the images, using the same subjects and exact original composition but taken up to 60 years later. The effect is hypnotic, transporting the viewer back into their own childhood. The series was bought by Saatchi and shown in Newspeak: British Art Now II, which has just been shown in Adelaide, Australia along with Tracy Emin’s ubiquitous Bed.

Clarisse is currently working on a number of projects being shown throughout Europe. She describes her work as a natural bi-product of her life, being inspired by her travels, discussions with friends and the people around her.

The concept of time is pivotal in your work, and photography is the perfect medium with which to jump through it and manipulate it, why are you so interested in time as a subject matter?

It’s an obsession; I find it fascinating to experiment with the ability of photography to play with time. I like to manipulate it, control it, and change it’s order. I like to look at the old days and find a way to bring them back to the present. Without really realising I keep returning to this concept. I started questioning myself a lot to understand why my relation with time is so intimate at the age of 25. I suppose that I am too young to use it as something hostile or fatal so I use it as collaborator.

Your Market Estate Project was conducted in an old council estate that was just about to be demolished. The piece documented the life of a resident, Jimmy Ward, and was first shown in his flat. It then developed into Rise and Fall, could you expand on these pieces of work?

The project was in Holloway in North London. A 571 flat council estate was just about to be demolished, an up until the very last days before, 31 families called it their home for over 40 years. I met Jimmy Watts there in a lift; he was the first person to move into Market Estate in 1967, and he became like my grandfather. He told me about his life in Market Estate, showed me old home videos, photographs and letters that documented his life in the building. I tried to tell Jimmy’s story in words and pictures. Rise and Fall is the continuity of the exhibition in Jimmy’s flat but in the white box of a gallery. The installation contains all of the original features and contents of Jimmy’s kitchen from his demolished flat including home super 8 movies with voiceover running on his TV and Jimmy’s video captured through his kitchen window showing youth damaging the building.

I am interested in your movement at St Martin’s from Set Design to Photography and how you incorporate both of these practices within your work.

When I was 19 and a student from France, I originally applied to St Martin’s to do fine art but they told me I should go to set design. I suddenly realised I would have to do model making for these pieces of literature and unfortunately it was not me: I ended up reading Shakespeare plays with my terrible English and I was always trying to find a way to kind of avoid it.

What I started to enjoy was spending all my time in the darkroom, I was always in the photography department. So, I decided to study a Masters in Photography and set design naturally merged within my photography projects. Art school teaches you how to think and how to express it in a creative manner but you can’t express your concept well if you’re artistic skills are not honed.

The concepts of resemblance and representation are present in your work. You construct themes within your photographs which are theatrical. What do you think that contributes to the photograph as an artwork?

The theatrical re-staging renews your adult vision of your childhood images, they can be a way of reflecting one’s past and identity. They conceal just as much as they reveal. I create a photograph instead of just taking the right moment.

Yes because there was a comic element to the images, when I watched the video of your brother, behind the table. I couldn’t quite work out what created that comic element?

I think it is actually the dress, the clothes. There is a magic to the images, but also a part of sadness some hopes and dreams.

In the portraits, what do you think is the strand that maintains that person throughout their life?

It is the eyes, the look. For example the picture of my Grandmother, it is the eyes, looking in the same way, as she did as a child. The important part of my photographs is not so much the reconstructed performative parts but the more essential truthfulness of them. The reality of how time has passes for the subjects, the continuous strand that maintains them. The pictures I did with my mum, my grandmother and my father are the strongest for me because you can really see how time has passed for them.

In aesthetics there is a lot of debate about the distinction between photography and painting. With photographs we look at dusty snapshots of long deceased ancestors. What are your thoughts on this distinction?

It took so long for photography to be accepted. Lots of painters were against it in some way because they were all saying look this is not art. For example, recently they stopped making Polaroid’s, maybe because they didn’t get enough money for them. And then they had to do it again, because it is much more expensive and you have got something and it is quite like that, there is no more film, now people are realising how great it is.

Your degree show was the first showing of Un-Possible Retour, which was then subsequently shown at the Saatchi gallery. How did this project get consummated?

I had to write a proposal for my final major project. What started this idea was a picture of my brother lying in the bath naked, in a pink bucket. I thought I would love to recreate it, and then i looked at more family photos without realising all these things, really the meaning of it.

So I wrote my proposal and went back to France. When I got back I realised how incredibly difficult it was going to be to recreated the images: I was going to have to be extremely organised. I kept flying back and forth from London to France, and had to be in constant communication with my family. Hey can i grab you for 5 hours you know. Especially when you are living in London and you have to bring all your set you know, and you have to bring everything from the kitchen, so yeah, it was impossible.

And now the Newspeak: British art now show has gone to Australia, with Tracy Emin’s bed.

I love Tracy Emin’s bed actually. When I was 15 I came to London from France and went there to the Saatchi gallery and saw the Sensation show: which showcased all the YBA’s along with Tracy’s Bed. I was just starting to really love art and it blew me away, I was so impressed I thought this is art.

I would never have guessed that 7 years later I would have a phone call from the Photographers Gallery saying Saatchi just bought your work. When I heard there were 10 minutes of craziness, and then I calmed down, like after every exam you know, you come back to earth.

What do you think about being involved in the contemporary art market; does it taint or affect your work?

I feel lucky to be able to live out of it but sometimes I feel like the commercialisation of the art world is reaching saturation point. It feels so money driven that it is in danger of losing sight of any other purpose. I learnt with my past experience that the most important thing is to be surrounded by the right people, people that believe in you not only as a product. It is really difficult when you start to understand how the business side of the art world works because artists are not really trained for that but you have you quickly learn and accept that your art is not only a passion but also a job.

There is an emotional dimension to your work. What would you say that primarily is?

Compassion, I spend hours and hours and hours learning about the life’s of people. I like people, I like to listen to their stories.

What are you working on currently? What motivates you and forges your work ethic?

I have been working on The Unknown Soldier project, as well as other projects in Europe and Tel Aviv. The Unknown Soldier began the day I decided to look through old photographs of strangers. I found a lot in second hand and antique shops, and discovered entire lives documented. One that particularly struck me was a 1940’s photo album that showed a young man from birth to the last day he was seen by his family, the day he left to fight in World War II. So far it is the story of an unknown soldier.

In terms of work ethic, it is really important to enjoy your work. If you enjoy what you are doing it comes naturally. Try to push yourself, it will always get done, really challenge yourself and work hard.

For more information about Clarisse’s projects and work, please see her website http://www.clarisse-darcimoles.com/

HAUS DIGITAL