Personal Background
Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil is originally from France and holds a master's degree in Cinematography and a degree in Art History. She first worked in the cultural sector from 1998 to 2005, at the Musée d'Orsay then at L'Archipel, a Parisian cinema of art. She then decided to become a commercial photographer and high-end retoucher and moved to Montreal in 2009. Since 2016, she has been developing the artistic side of her photographic work, while also working in the VFX industry for cinema and TV after receiving training in compositing at NAD in 2020. She has received several international prizes and awards for her photographic work, most notably in 2021 the first prize of the Open Call in the Life Framer competition. She has been a part of the RAAV (Regroupement des Artistes en Arts Visuels du Québec) since the beginning of 2022. Some of her work is exhibited and sold in the Montreal virtual gallery Grizzly Montreal.
Style
Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil's photographic practice is akin to the rewriting of reality in the form of poetry of shapes and colors. She starts with a material that is similar to reality and transforms or distorts it to create visual poetry where dreaminess, symbolism, and imagination take over. She explores the transformation of reality in the pictorialist and impressionist lineage of photography for a modern painting style shown in her photographic work. She uses physical filters, such as fabric, water, a window screen, and coated glass with various texture and opacity materials, to create blurriness and distortion in her photos. She lets feeling and emotion take precedence over the subject's precise depiction.
Philosophy
Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil's work takes root in many psychological and philosophical themes. Her narrative series often address the difficult search and discovery of identity, with the recurring trope of the quest for oneself. In an interview about her award-winning photographic series "Breathe!", she explained what she meant to convey through her images, saying, "we can extend the constraints of gendered education to the search of authenticity, who we really are and what defines us as a unique human. It’s hard to be yourself in world that keeps asking what predefined role to play, telling you what you should like or not". She also often explores the status of women in her work, such as the expectations, pressures, and stereotypes placed on them by society, viewing it from the different perspectives of her childhood and those of her daughters. She especially likes to explore the subject area of childhood because it's a very important moment of life, where you build your future self, and she finds it soul-searching to go back to childhood because it allows us to understand lots of things decades after.
Influences
Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil is deeply influenced by the disciplines she studied, such as philosophy, cinema, and fine arts, as she is very passionate about them. Portraiture, flora and landscape, both urban and natural, are the genres that inspire her the most. She also draws inspiration from classical and baroque paintings by using chiaroscuro a lot in her narrative series and portraits, which is directly influenced by Caravaggio. Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil has influenced me in my photographic work by showing me how I can include storytelling in my photos and make a point about an issue I'm passionate about. She has also inspired me to explore more aspects of photography because as she says, "photography is an unlimited creative playground for me".
Compare and Contrast
Chevelures (Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil) |
Flower Braid |
In my recreated image, I used more of a warm light, while Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil used more of a cool, white lighting. My lighting also created more shadows on the subject's back, while her's is very clean with minimal shadow. I did not use the same flowers as she did in her image, but I did use ones that were shriveling to emulate the same feeling as her. Similarly to her, I took the photo in portrait mode and I framed it to only capture the upper back and neck with the braid in the center.
Respire (Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil) |
Uncomfortable |
For this photo, I focused more on capturing the concept than getting each of the little details to be the same. I did not have a nice tiara or dress as Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil has in her picture, so I improvised with a party hat and whatever clothes I could find in my house. I used clothespins of different colors, so they look much darker in my image, but they still get the same message across. I edited my photo to be black and white, like hers, but she was able to get a greater contrast between the subject's skin and her clothes and the background.
États Imprécis III (Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil) |
Shriveling |
This picture was probably the most difficult to recreate because of the distinct mesh texture in the background. I tried with multiple different objects to create something similar, and ended up using a blue mesh shirt for the background. I had to make the background black and white to remove the color of the mesh. I used similarly shriveling flowers as Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil did, but I only had white roses and couldn't recreate the pink tint that her flowers have.
Artist Statement
I really like Anne-Claire Vimal du Monteil's photography because she is always trying to convey a message about psychological and philosophical themes. With my recreated images, I tried to depict the imperfection and fragility of things society often deems as perfect and the pressure that is put on them to appear as such. The flowers in my first photo (Flower Braid) and my third photo (Shriveling) are wrinkled and shriveling up. This is meant to show how there is still beauty in something that isn't as perfect as you would expect; their fragility is what makes them so special. My second photo (Uncomfortable) is meant to represent the pressures that women feel in society, which cause them to feel restricted and unable to breathe freely.