The connection to Zonca\u2019s film was not planned. The title came from the project\u2019s art director, Wataru Komachi, who suggested it during the project\u2019s early stages. Only later did To\u00efd\u00e9 reveal that she had been deeply moved by the film years before. \u201cWhen I found out, I felt an intense emotion: it was like silent recognition, this unexpected connection between his vision and mine moved me deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n
The zine gathers portraits of four young women \u2013 Gabrielle, Dana, Ari and Cat \u2013 photographed in Paris and its outskirts. The settings are ordinary: childhood bedrooms, grassy parks, the overlooked margins of the city. To\u00efd\u00e9\u2019s Paris is something outside of the typical postcard romanticism, instead using the banal backdrops to draw the focus to the sense of transition unfolding in each frame. \u201cThese ordinary places become the setting for metamorphoses. Their banality serves as a backdrop for an almost cinematic atmosphere, where intimacy and dreams intertwine,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s this same mundanity that follows the subjects. There\u2019s no overriding plot or story that\u2019s easy to follow, but instead a universal mood that swells in the photos as the subjects sit idle in their bedrooms, kick around in football cleats and roll in the grass with their faces bare and hair falling out of place. It\u2019s an idleness that only a teenager can know. \u201cAdolescence is a time of metamorphosis, when everything is still possible,\u201d To\u00efd\u00e9 says. \u201cIt\u2019s also a moment that speaks to memory and to the passage of time, a fragile threshold that never fully leaves us. In those gestures, in that oscillation between shadow and light, I find the same tension that runs through much of my work.\u201d<\/p>\n One medium in which To\u00efd\u00e9 communicates that metamorphosis is through the use of nature within the photos. Within the frames are flowering bulbs, butterflies, and rolling hills of grass. \u201cNature is like a mirror of emotions,\u201d To\u00efd\u00e9 explains. \u201cFlowers, grasses, and light become echoes of faces. I love this correspondence between the inner world of teenage girls and fragile, ephemeral landscapes.\u201d A standout shot of the series is one of long-time collaborator Gabrielle, where she stands on the brink of a lake, melancholic in expression. \u201cShe looks straight into the lens, with a gentle yet almost wild intensity. It is as if the entire project is concentrated in this suspended moment,\u201d To\u00efd\u00e9 explains.<\/p>\n Though it might be tempting to read the work as a personal documentation of French girlhood in an idle town, The Dream Life of Angels speaks to a wider representation of girlhood. To\u00efd\u00e9 openly cites cinema as her strongest influence, naming filmmakers Guy Gilles, Mikhael Hers and Mia Hansen-L\u00f8ve. \u201cWhat inspires me is their way of working with atmosphere and rhythm, how they capture everyday life with sensitivity, leaving room for silence, time and light,\u201d To\u00efd\u00e9 says. She also credits fairytales, evocative interiors, and themes of time, memory and dreams as touchstones of her direction.<\/p>\n When asked about the emotion coursing through the project, To\u00efd\u00e9 lands on vertigo, a disorienting, dizzying sensation of standing at a threshold. \u201cThe vertigo of growing up, of searching for oneself, of being on the edge of something\u201d are the main themes that the series centres around. This suspension is one she hopes lingers for viewers: \u201cI would like them to feel a sense of floating, like a reminiscence of their own adolescence, with its mixture of hope, loneliness and fragile beauty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Dream Life of Angels is available here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
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Photography Elise To\u00efd\u00e9<\/p>\n<\/a>
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Photography Elise To\u00efd\u00e9<\/p>\n
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Photography Elise To\u00efd\u00e9