Photos In My Head
To photograph the thoughts, to capture the impalpable and seize the essence of an emotional and physical experience. To translate purely physiological sensations such as dreams that stimulate one’s thoughts in a state of sound sleep, the feelings of anguish, of oppression or of the fulfillment.
To represent the inner well-being. Once they are freed of their usual context, once they get rid of their commun meaning, the lines, the raw materials metamorphose and they let an impression, an emotion rise. The rawest and most natural sensation is enable to come out from the picture: that is the outline of this five-series collection about dream, the unconscious and the representation of the mind. Black ideas in ‘Low Key’, repetition of feelings leading to oppression in ‘Persistence’, the representation of neuronal transmission enabling thoughts in ‘Brain Waves’ and ‘Steam of Consciousness’. ‘Axon of Thoughts’ stands for the path ran by nervous impulses with their accelerations, time pauses and hesitations before they reach ‘Mind Rest’, the fulfillment, the reconciliation that lead to one’s Self. Caroline Jolivet is influenced by Man Ray’s Rayographs, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy’s photogramms that get rid of all constraints including that of the camera; by Paul Strand’s constructivist photographs making of the shadow line a central artisitc element and by Rodtchenko, where any raw material can become poetical. Also inspired by Vazzarelli’s geometrical motives, by Soulages ‘beyond black’ light and by Rothko’s work on colors and forms, Photos in My Head plunges into an emotional analysis, a face to face with one’s subconscient.
‘Urban Wanders’
As a continuation of ‘Photos In My Head’, Caroline Jolivet goes from depicting dreams and consciousness in the latter to questioning the perception of reality and its misrepresentation in this new series of photographs entitled ‘Urban Wanders’. To make one’s way through cities is to make one’s way through life: as a metaphor of a personal reflection that evolves with the same feelings of turmoil or serenity that one can find in the Urban sprawl. The cities question, intimidate, fascinate and worry: it mirrors one’s inner path as a parable of thoughts full of wonders. ‘Urban Wanders’ thus start with ‘Evaporating city’ which symbolizes delusion and the lost of landmarks that characterize modern times. The loss of control and the impression of moving backwards that may follow is represented in the series ‘Drifting’. ‘Path of Wonders’, scattered with doubts and questions, stands for the search of meaning for any events that come across one’s way as well as the meaning of life, and of one’s existence. On the path, ‘Stage Whisperers’ make up for significant encounters that help to see reality differently and change one’s perception. Then comes the realization with ‘Nothing as it Seems’ that everything depends on where one stands to look at it physically or metaphorically. Reality changes as much as you change your perception of it. To get closer to the photograph will enlighten a different reality of it. Once one finally sees things differently, one can reach ‘Here and Now’, a feeling of accomplishment and peace: a state of understanding and relief that enables to live at peace with one’s environment while accepting its particularities. As it takes you in a journey across Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Paris among other cities, ‘Urban Wanders’ is actually an invitation to introspection, a journey inside your mind.
Mindful Photography
Inspired by Meditation and Mindfulness, Jolivet’s launched Mindful Photography in 2018 as a new invitation to introspection.