CE QUE VAUT UNE FEMME : LES DOUZE HEURES DU JOUR ET DE LA NUIT

Elsa & Johanna

ce que vaut une femme :

les DOUZE heures du jour et de la nuit

ELSA & JOHANNA

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The origin of this project is the discovery of a book, in the attic of the family house, entitled “Ce que vaut une femme : traité d’éducation morale et pratique des jeunes filles” (What a woman is worth : a treatise on the moral and practical education of young girls), published in 1893 with the support of the Ministry of Public Education. Its content appeared to us both edifying and comic.

The tone is set in the introduction by its author, Éline Roch, winner of the Doyen-Doublié Prize (in 1893): “What would happen to our country the day when women were diverted from their natural destination, when young girls could assume that there was something else for them than the noble and holy mission of being wives and mothers? “.

To accompany the re-edition of the book, we wanted a woman’s perspective to bring her sensitivity and emotions to this work from another time. We have chosen to give carte blanche to the duo of female artists Elsa & Johanna who present an original series and a singular and offbeat response to the book.

“To the rhythm of the treatise on the moral education of young girls, the series of each of the 24 portraits of characters embodied by Elsa & Johanna are inserted between the pages, sometimes making the text disappear to better impose itself, or facing one of the 12 engravings of the book.“
Extract from the preface
Marie Robert – Conservatrice en chef au musée d’Orsay, Photographie et Cinéma

les douze heures du jour et de la nuit

A propos de la série Les douze heures du jour et de la nuit d’Elsa & Johanna

“Surprised by the denial of women’s humanity and their unique sensitivity, the two photographers explored a range of female personalities to restore their full freedom to feel, to open up the palette of emotions, and to expand the field of possibilities. Over the course of twenty-four hours in a single day, Elsa and Johanna took turns embodying twenty-four different female characters, whom they portrayed and photographed within the intimate setting of the home.”

“The choice of black-and-white film photography, a first for Elsa and Johanna, is deliberately intended to give these women and their emotions a timeless quality. It is up to us to dive into the portraits and sense the entire life carried by each one of them. The Twelve Hours of Day and Night offers an archetype of women, forming a constellation of twenty-four goddesses who stand as guardians of time and of the destinies being shaped.”
Léone Sallé de Chou
Philosophe

À PROPOS D’ELSA & JOHANNA

Elsa & Johanna are a duo of visual artists, photographers, and filmmakers. They met in 2014 at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where they were both pursuing a program alongside their respective studies.

At the time, Elsa was a student at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, while Johanna was studying at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, in Eric Poitevin’s studio.

In 2015, they gained recognition with their series of self-portraits A Couple of Them, in which they embody fictional characters. The staging of the self has since become a recurring theme in their artistic practice.

They are represented by Galerie La Forest Divonne.

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