Writing, like photography, freezes time, brings past moments back to life and makes them resonate, transporting us to other dimensions of time and space, to parallel worlds where reality and imagination create new narratives.
If solitude is a prerequisite for the act of writing as much as for the photographic act, conversely, the practice of photography, writing, and by extension reading, are undeniable antidotes to solitude.
“Collective” artist residencies, a potential threat to this condition of creative solitude, sometimes paradoxically allow for valuable exchanges that foster creative processes and the blossoming of projects.
I write these lines reflecting on various experiences over the years, and in particular on my encounter with Carline Bourdelas during her residency in Deauville with the photo4food foundation for the Planches Contact festival in 2023.
Carline Bourdelas has long reflected on the place and function of art in the lives of artists, striving to understand the mysteries of creation, in the middle of torments, questions, and attempts at answers.
Upon her arrival, she gave the impression of almost single-handedly embodying the artist’s solitude—her doubts, her questions about her role, and about the meaning, value, and legitimacy of her work. As the days went by, bonds were formed, surrounding and supporting her in a new way. Her project gradually took shape, her plans became concrete, and her vulnerabilities transformed into a kind of grace.
Her attraction to books, her passion for photography and Normandy, inspired her literature-related project and her initial “research” on Proust, before she turned her attention to the work and personalities of Balzac and Sagan, which gave rise to the three series presented, in their entirety and together, for the first time in this exhibition.
In her quest, Carline Bourdelas explores the worlds of the chosen authors as much as her own.
In a dance step, she draws near and moves away from them, sharing the questions, fears, and desires that inhabit them; fascinated and frightened.
With her extreme sensitivity, she seems to deeply feel the moods of these authors, who draw her into a relationship of identification, into a secret place, from which she narrates visually in their stead and alongside them.
Carline Bourdelas’s poetic writing plays with twilight and darkness, with blurriness and the fleeting, with repetition, with appearances and disappearances.
Her aesthetic, imbued with nostalgia, supports her reflections on the passage of time, loss, beauty, memories, and small joys. A world that is at times dark, at times sunny, over which a subtle melancholy hangs.
–Laura Serani, Exhibition Curator
Carline Bourdelas: Au fil des pages, des images
Jul 6 – Sep 6, 2026
Galerie Huit Arles
Arles, France
