Lives and work in France
After an american childhood, I grew up in Orleans, France. I studied History of Art at the University of Bordeaux (1993-1995) and then returned to the US to study photography at New England School of Photography, in Boston (1995-1997).
In 1998 I started my first project, Las Jineteras, photographying young female prostitutes in Old Havana, Cuba. It is apon my return from Cuba, with my completed project, that I moved back to France and started working for The New York Times, Libération and Le Monde 2.
My research focuses on the social body as a mirror to our culture, photographying gestures, postures, the physical involvment required to work in factories and supermarkets, women working on agricultural exploitations and in the lace workshops of Low Normandy and handicap people or students of a professional secondary school for tapisstery and metalwork.
In a civilisation where ‘everything comes under the gaze more than the image*’ ; where subjects, before looked upon by God, are now scrutinized by a third party with the means of ever evolving technological tools, my intention is to represent the physical form of the other in a time frame, as it is, in the present and taken out of context.
The act of photography takes on a sacred dimension : its intention is no longer to divide but to create unity. Therefore, this newly fabricated imagery of the People, as a figure of the ordinary and of our moderne times, reclaims its original iconic value of bringing communities together and reaching out to the collective sensitivity.
olivia gay
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