CAMILLE MEISNER
Cluster Exhibitor | Photography & Print Fair 2022
Camille Meisner (b.1995) is a French artist based in London with a main interest in photography and video.
Her interest in street photography goes back to when she was a child, inspired by her father's love of photography, she still has a passion for it and creates photography series wherever she has lived or travelled, interested by architecture, colours and the random passerby or comical sceneries.
She has a background in philosophy studies, in cinema, fine art and photography.
Studying cinema has enabled her to develop a cinematic style in her photographic work and influenced the way she uses light to create an architectural space. She takes her inspiration by studying the cinematic work of photographers such as Gregory Crewdson who creates big scale cinematic photographs but also painters such as Edward Hopper who creates very narrative paintings which shows in her street photography as well as in her video work.
Her work is also influenced by her background in philosophical studies. She focuses on philosophical concepts such as reality and how it is perceived by herself and others but also, the uncanny, the truth, the passage of time and the place of the artist and the relationship between the art piece and the viewer.
Aesthetically her work is influenced by the artistic movement of the Surrealists which focuses on philosophy and reality.
She likes to create mixed medium pieces and has an interest in moving images and video collages which is inspired by her love of film and surrealism where she reuses old street photography and creates surrealist collages mixed with videos such as her project The Surreal Sea.
She has a particular interest in the status of women in society and is inspired by women’s experiences around her as well as her own. It shows in projects such as Mare Nostrum which centres around her grandmother's experience who was imprisoned as a “Resistant” during world war II and “The Lockdown Project” where she represents her experience during the pandemic.
The Lockdown Project reflects on the uncanny feelings of being locked in and the tension felt between being locked at home and not feeling safe outside. It also looks at the digital space where it seems is the only way we can have contact with the world. As well as exploring the concept of time that is passing us by while we watch from the inside. There is also a sense of fear and an uncanny feeling when outside avoiding others instead of living together as a community.
We feel as a lonely entity trying to adapt to a world we don't have control of.
It represents the aspect of loneliness which came with the pandemic. The photograph of the train station is linked to time, it is a reminiscence of the past. Like the “Madeleine de Proust” this photograph transports to the past and defies the chronological order of time. So in spite of the fact that the day to day time is still inaccessible in real life, the feeling of the moment drawn from the picture of the station is regained and stays the same forever.
Time is passing us by while we are inside with a feeling of being fixed in time in spite of the fact that the day to day time is still moving. This opposition is shown with the fixed clock on the wall which has no hands and behind it the waves of a living sea perpetually moving.
The spectator becomes an involuntary shadow brought into the work with the artist, into this dystopian world.