Valérie Belin

In this monograph, Valérie Belin's work from the 1990s to the present day is explored through some thirty series. Breaking with chronological order, the artist's various colour and B&W series are interwoven, evolving and questioning our relationship with beauty, artifice and the impermanence of things. From shooting to retouching, the photographer creates successive touches and layers, like a painter playing on the ambivalence between the living and the artificial. The people she portrays, whether models, transsexuals, clowns or Michael Jackson look-alikes, are for the most part in a transitional state towards 'the desire to transform themselves into images', as Valérie Belin explains, while her objects, such as vintage cars or other damaged vehicles, engines or vintage dresses, seem animated, sublimated by the lens. The result is images with strong aesthetic and evocative power that embody both 'the drama and the beauty of the world', as Sébastien Gokalp points out in his text. The book accompanies the retrospective of the artist's work at the Musée des beaux-arts de Tourcoing, the MUba Eugène Leroy, from 17 March to 27 August 2023.