Lara Gasparotto
Under the Sheets
[ EPF 2013 SHORTLIST ]
ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT
I am Striping our intimacy, our sheets do not isolate anymore our bodies.
I feel that I live through the contact of others, their look, their skin. My photos are the captures of our unprotected feelings.
Instead of completed series my photos are a collection of loose images, put together spontaneously. My photography are snapshots of the daily lives of my friends, a generation on the edge of adulthood and being lost. I captures these moments spontaneously, without distance between me and my subject, since I am part of the same world.
It’s about a generation dealing with all the possibilities and dangers of life.
I’m never a distant observer, record what I see while traveling and happens from time to time that I see someone in the street that intrigues me. In fragments we are introduced to my life. Sometimes I get ideas in my dreams though and then I ask friends to come with me to the places I’ve seen in my dreams and photograph them there.
I don’t want to suggest indifference but a freedom, a frivolity to enjoy and an innocence to preserve. I want people to remind of the beauty around them that you sometimes even find in the most simple of things, even in Belgium. I want to inspire people to enjoy the moment and look a but closer at things. I want them to feel emotions, sensations. Emotions that remind them of certain things. Like if people can watch they own biography trough my work.
Bio
I was born in 1989, started taking photos at the age of 16, studying fine arts from 14 until I was 17. Then I was enrolled in the School of Photography at Saint-Luc in Liege my hometown, where I was a student of Emmanuelle D’Autreppe, Alain Janssens, and Jean Janssis. Since I’ve been travelling around the word and working for some magazine.
I showed my work in Berlin, Paris, Beijing, Bruxelles, Anvers, Arles, Breda and Amsterdam.
Related links
The grim, joyless, world that occupies a certain portion of the inside the head of the artist is marvelously depicted. Even number 2, which contains multiple joyful elements, comes across grim. I think maybe my favorite image is number 5. I was taught so strongly to dust off my negatives and touch out the spots of the flecks I missed and, to the best of my ability, I still follow that practice even when the original image is digital. And then Lara incorporates dust, lint and spots to place an image of beauty and enigma solidly into the grim, joyless world of the rest, without subtracting from the beauty and enigma.
Well done.
I think the judges had a very tough job this year.
Thanks for chiming in Frostfrog. This series really rattles my cage. Very powerful stuff, and what I see a lot of people aiming for but missing. Check out Lara’s link, a huge amount of amazing imagery.
Congratulations Lara, Frostfrog is right about the judges having a tough job.
I like it
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Yes I like this. I love the looseness and the spontaneity.
Attitude. probably more important than what type of camera we use or what we point it at.
some very arresting images here. Off to look at the website.
I think Lara as Anders Petersen always says is “Shooting from the stomach.” The images kind of remind me of this quote. ..
“There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it.”
Judith McNaught
The pictures are totally and unapologetically about Lara…
I’m amazed nobody has mentioned the violence…poetic on occasion…certainly interesting visually….thoroughly grim…
please just delete my earlier comment…the passive acquiescence to violence is disturbing…the photography is powerful….