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I met Anne-Laure a few years ago when we used to both shoot in the wedding industry in Calgary. I am captivated by how well she is able to bring out the essence of her subjects whist projecting her thoughts and emotions into the portrait. We’ve become good friends and can easily spend a whole afternoon sipping coffee and chatting about life and art. She’s recently relocated back to the Netherlands with her family, where she pursues her fine art career. I’m happy that she’ll be back for the opening of our group show, PULSE. Anne-Laure is one of the amazing photographers showing at PULSE this year at Inglewood Fine Arts during the Exposure Photography Festival.
Anne-Laure Autin (formerly working as ‘Anne Wright Photography’) is an emerging fine-art photographer whose empathetic imagery goes to the core of human connection. Her work is emotive and honest yet hopeful. She draws inspiration from her daily personal interactions, enraptured by the myriad of contrasting juxtapositions life offers us. She is particularly moved by womanhood with its rich intricacies and seemingly contradicting themes such as Strength and Vulnerability. Her search for beauty in authenticity makes her award-winning work both soulful and highly intimate.
Preoccupied with the philosophical concept of Universal Truth as a teenager, she also found an undeniable aesthetic in the purest of sciences; she therefore studied Theoretical Mathematics and holds an MSc from the University of Leiden (NL). She embraces the duality of her fascination for Truth and her love of Human Nature – where no logic seems to prevail – by always seeking the deepest most candid and raw emotions in her subjects.
Anne-Laure was born and raised in France and moved to the Netherlands when she was 13. She recently returned from a six years relocation in Western Canada with her British family and is based in the Netherlands again. (Source: annelaureautin.com)
A few months ago I had a growing migraine attack while lying in bed on a Saturday morning. Migraines are new to me so I was surprised to sense tingling spreading across my limbs. I suddenly felt something pop in my head and pulse through me. Right then paralysis took me over like a wave would. I couldn’t move, couldn’t even open my eyes, couldn’t call for help. My mind was fully on but my body was no longer responding to its command. I was locked-in. It only lasted a short while but it was the most terrifying event of my life so far. In what started as an attempt to exorcise my angst, I decided to explore through photography the anguish I had felt during this episode.
Beyond my very personal connection to this body of work, I have always been drawn to contrasting juxtapositions. And I’m mostly interested in a growing realisation that oppositions and contradictions are not always necessarily mutually exclusive as logic would dictate – for instance an ugly incident can also have some beauty to it. Reflecting on having been locked-in, I was fascinated by the idea that I had felt very much in motion qua brain while totally paralysed physically. I set out to highlight those two opposite States of Being happening concurrently by representing visually the different stages of my incident combining multiple exposures digitally. The use of long exposure times in particular allowed me to convey movement, depicting the agitation of my spirit. I believe digital impressions would have been too sharp and crisp for the subject matter and I therefore chose to hand print the series as Van Dyke Browns. This antique alternative process gives the final prints a certain softness, fitting with my experience, which adds to the slightly surreal feel of the work. This in turn also acts as an allegory for the complex and obscure link between our body and our mind – a connection we rarely truly deeply contemplate, except maybe on the days when it stops working properly. (Source: annelaureautin.com)
Anne-Laure Autin can be found on the following social media sites:
Instagram: annelaureautin
Twitter: AnneLaureAutin
Facebook: AnneLaureAutinPhotographer
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