Vacances
Retrouvées
"When photographs lose their names, do their stories disappear—or do they simply wait to be found again?"
Vacances Retrouvées begins with anonymous vacation photographs discovered in thrift stores and flea markets—images detached from the people and histories that once gave them meaning. Through painting, these forgotten snapshots are partially obscured, altered, and reimagined, becoming layered spaces where fragments of memory and invention coexist.
The works do not attempt to restore the original narratives of the photographs. Instead, they explore what remains after personal history begins to dissolve: gestures, atmospheres, landscapes, and fleeting moments of intimacy that persist beyond identification.
Some parts of the photographs are entirely covered, while others remain exposed, leaving traces of the original image to emerge. This process of concealment and revelation asks: which elements of memory need to be fully transformed, and which can remain, suspended in time, to evoke the story that’s been lost?
By removing or transforming recognizable features, the paintings shift attention away from biography and toward emotional residue. The images become suspended between document and fiction, familiarity and distance, inviting viewers to project their own associations onto scenes that feel both anonymous and strangely remembered.
Across the series, painting functions as both concealment and recovery—a way of tracing the unstable afterlife of images as they move through time, memory, and collective imagination.
