INTRODUCING MARIE CLEREL
I’m from Clermont-Ferrand in the middle of France, I liked living there but I felt the need of living in a bigger city -where I could meet other people, go to the museum whenever I wanted to, go to the movies anytime of the day… So I came to Paris four years ago and I love it! I do go to the museums as many times as possible, I watch tons of great movies and I’ve met (and still meet) great people. But now, I feel like I need to move again, I’d love to live in Berlin. I’m 22. I remember my very first picture, I was 6 (maybe 7), and my parents bought me a polaroid for my birthday, it was in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere and I took a picture of a blooming tree in front of our house. Since that day I think I never stopped, I’ve used tons of disposable cameras just for fun and because it was cheap. But I think that I really started taking pictures by the age of 16, when I realized I could be good at it. It’s a feeling more than an event that made me start. I’ve always been afraid of loosing my memory. I keep saying to myself “I don’t want to forget this, never”. So, it might be this feeling that motivated me and that still motivates me now. I have no particular goal, each photograph or project is spontaneous, instinctive, but unwittingly, I take pictures to remember (I tend to take pictures just after the events that hurt me or filled me with joy), I’ve always been afraid of loosing something. I always need to collect things. For my projects, I’m also very spontaneous, I start doing something and then I see what I can do with it, the meaning of it, and it’s constantly linked to a sense of loss and to the notion of memory. I realized I could do something that would make me feel free; I lack of self-assurance and my pictures help me beat this default. But the biggest thing is that I met great people that taught me a lot, and I keep meeting people, learning from them and sharing. Without photography I probably wouldn’t have gone to New-York last summer, I wouldn’t have wandered in the streets with nowhere to go, neither have I met my love by accident. The only camera I use is my old and timeworn Nikon FM2. I took this picture after someone left my home. I’ve hosted him for about four days, I didn’t personally know this person before -and we still don’t know each other very well. All I can say is that I admire him for some reasons and I wanted everything to be pleasant for him but I wasn’t doing good at that time, I couldn’t even cook for us. One night, he had to sleep outside, because someone else would sleep in my studio, so he slept in the street and when he came back, he had bought fruits for us. This was the first time I ate kumquats and we ate the first strawberries of the year. He left and I was sorry. After I came back from the bus stop I had taken him, I took a picture of the leftovers. It’s so hard to pick just one photographer I love. I’ll just name those who come first to my mind JH Engström, Laura Letinski, Yuki, Onodera and her beautiful project “roma-roma”Todd Hido and Eric Rondepierre. Can you tell precisely why you love someone or something? From my point of view it’s quite impossible, I just love their work, they talk about the things I love to talk : memory, loss, vanishing things and love. All the rest is unspeakable.
