Éliane Excoffier | Kiev

Exhibition Dates: September 17 – October 24, 2009

The gallery is please to present “Kiev”, a new series of photographic work by Éliane Excoffier, which addresses to provocative history of eroticism.

Excoffier’s work continues to be inspired by the culmination of two passions. Her intrigue in the representation of the female body and the investigation of photography’s historical processes and techniques are juxtaposed to create this most recent body of work. The subjects in Excoffier’s photographs are not identified as particular women, but fragments of the female body, as their conceals faces render them anonymous. Inspired by erotic imagery of the early 20^th century, “Kiev” uses classical representations of sexual desire and eroticism. Excoffier’s sensual images are largely influenced by the work of photographers John Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873-1949), Pierre Molinier (1900-1976) and Carlo Molino (1905-1973) who all made portraits of the fetishised female form.

Excoffier, a self-taught photographer, captures these female nudes in a series of twenty black and white photograph taken with a Kiev 60, a camera manufactured at the prime of the Soviet Union in the capital of Ukraine. She uses this medium format single lens reflex camera by creating her own paper negatives that are hand-cut to fit into the back. When printed, the delicate surface of the paper subtly references the past as the grain and imperfections of the handmade negatives are revealed. The long exposure times required for this technique create ghostly images of the female form as figures move within the frame. Excoffier offers the viewer a modern take on the voyeuristic images attributed to the early 20^th century.