Exploring, with a very sure sense of humor and duplicity, The Plural Life of Identity, to use the title of their first retrospective in Germany in 2021, Elsa & Johanna unveil their new visual narrative at the Studio of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.

A new narrative of self-fiction “in the smallest detail” carried out during four weeks in May 2021 in the North of Germany, in about fifteen communities, including Moormerland, in Lower Saxony. Using their usual modus operandi, the duo will take over houses with an old-fashioned charm and play the protagonists of their domestic dramas imagined in situ, transforming themselves in turn into mothers or fathers, melancholic and idle teenagers, housewives…, in a troubling game of roles and metamorphoses. Fabulous actresses, the two photographers catch us in the trap of verisimilitude by the accuracy of their reconstructions.

Accuracy of attitudes and framing (very cinematographic), of costumes and accessories (deliciously vintage), but also, mastery of suspended times and unspoken words, which confront us with “total subjectivity” (claimed by Alain Robbe-Grillet in his manifesto Pour un nouveau roman in 1963).

Stéphanie Dulout

Until 6 November 2022
MEP – 5/7, rue de Fourcy, Paris 04
https://www.mep-fr.org/event/elsa-and-johanna/