Painted Ladies

In a signed and numbered edition of 800 copies, Painted Ladies gathers a series of women portraits made by Valérie Belin in 2017. Each woman is portrayed made-up revealing the traces of a brush used to paint and make-up. Brushes and pigments evoke tribal painting ; these photographs seem to result from initiation rites. With an absent look, each woman distinguishes herself by her pictorial style inscribing the portrait in a form of abstraction. With an obsessive desire to appropriate reality, Valérie Belin focuses her lens on the surface of beings to better reveal their density and enigmatic character. Her work, conceived in series, is based on a subtle play of repetitions and variations, giving to her images a minimalist rigor. Her photographs appear both flat and sculptural, two-dimensional and in volume. 

This artist book with the delicateness and textures of different Japanese papers, playing with glimmering effects, leave one to imagine these eight women along with a literary essay by French author Eric Reinhardt that evoke this idea of multiplying identity.