Interview Réponses Photo magazine: Emilie Möri, Songe colorisé
- Emilie Mori
- Sep 1, 2019
- 2 min read
Thanks to Renaud Marot / Reponses photo for this article on my ARCHITECTURES series, n°328 September October 2019.
“Boredom can be a powerful creative force! It was while wandering through the depopulated spaces of an off-season seaside resort that Emilie Möri had the idea of animating the architectural details, captured through her lens with the rigor of her profession as a graphic designer, with a palette of bold or acid colors. The result is a playful graphic ensemble of great formal coherence, building a mosaic of an imaginary desert city.Renaud Marot
How did this series come about? Off-season, during a long, dull winter in the south of France, by the ocean... Bored, I daydreamed and thought about discovering other countries, colorful houses in bright sunshine. I imagined images combining solitude and color. I tried to illustrate this reverie by coloring the walls to create an imaginary world. This “architectures” series is a dream that lasted a few seconds, and my profession as a graphic designer certainly contributed to its genesis. The midday sun drew geometric shadows that created abstract tableaux on the cement volumes of walls, terraces and staircases. This series is based on the harmony of golden proportions and chromatic work using strong colors. By coloring these white walls, I had all the material I needed to create a minimalist series. An imposing seafront residence dating from the 70s, “les Océanides” had been on my mind for some time, and the buildings had the good idea of having been freshly refurbished. This place is very interesting from an architectural point of view.
Why did you choose colorization rather than color, and a square format? I liked the idea of playing graphically with the “blank canvas” offered by these locations. So I started by thinking in terms of geometry and framing, then moved on to chroma in a second phase. Apart from the images in the “moments” series - which I'd describe more as a diary - all my photos are in square format, which has always held my interest from a personal, artistic and graphic point of view. CD covers, which have always appealed to me for their relevance and originality, are undoubtedly no stranger to this. Illustrating an intention or a project with a unique format has always fascinated me...
Where do you draw the line between realism and abstraction? I've always preferred the charm of the abstract, and what inspires me most are blurs, photo-graphic accidents... Yet this is what I didn't want to play up in this series, which is intended to be realistic. The plain surfaces and homogeneous textures of the architectural parts of the images, which could form a kind of formal collage if they occupied the entire frame, stand side by side with more complex natural zones formed by the sky or sea, or even vegetation. Abstraction is only apparent.
Are the images intended to be seen individually or in assemblages? I had imagined this series in large format and assembled, like a mosaic... My wish was granted, and I was lucky enough to see the photos exhibited at the BarrObjectif festival (Barro, Charentes) last year under these conditions. Seen from a distance, they looked like paintings made from pigments, and that's precisely what I wanted to achieve.
