This past October, the Maison Taittinger partnered with Process Editions to help showcase the work of emerging talents via a call for submissions open to all photographers, regardless of their age or career background. The goal was to give these artists visibility by featuring their work in the Process Journal, 10,000 copies of which were printed and distributed in November to mark the Mois de la Photo, and particularly during the Paris Photo event.
From among the seventy applications submitted, Process and the Maison Taittinger selected a collection of images by Charlotte Audoynaud, entitled “Braver les ronces pour mieux se perdre” (literally, “braving the brambles to better get lost”), and we are delighted to be able to unveil a few of the images from the collection here.
Bringing an emotive perspective to one’s surrounding environment – family, a neighbourhood, familiar places – is a fairly widespread approach; while in practice this remains a challenging process, Charlotte Audoynaud’s images succeed in touching the viewer. The familial moments shown here are buoyed by a whisper of poetry, imbuing them with the aura of instants frozen in time.
Charlotte Audoynaud sets her series within a “microterritory”: a specific space-time that appears to be timeless, shaped around a wild locale where her family has gathered since the passing of a loved one, whose presence continues to inhabit the space. The photographer captures her family in nature, composing a fictive documentary in which living beings pay homage to those who are now absent.
Their anonymous bodies become the characters in a visual tale; an intergenerational story interweaving childhood, memory and connection. For Charlotte Audoynaud, tales do not erase reality: rather, they transpose and soften it. Each image is a fragment of an intimate fable, capturing grass, shadows and gestures as symbols of connections that can be both ephemeral and enduring. This poetic tale creates opening to a parallel world; to another place in which each viewer can sense their own selves emerging.
