Eugénie Shinkle – Céline Mayrand

[Winter 1997-1998]

This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Summary
With her exacerbated sensitivity and exposed emotions, Eugénie Schinkle draws us into the whirlpool of her febrile energy. She leads us to think of the photographic act as a form of ritual, as an act responding symbolically to a sensual pleasure.

Like a hand caressing skin, Schinkle’s objective in scanning images is to gather, as she goes, pieces of landscapes to be stripped down to an infinity of images. Thus, she scatters this landscape, observes it as far as the eye can see. From a constellation of details, from a fragmentary and exfoliated vision of the landscape, its friable and polymorphous character is revealed. By cutting away its ornamental motifs, she “objectifies” the landscape, etiolates its very concept.

Because they solicit nothing but our collusion, these images speak for themselves. And, precisely because they require no language other than the complicity that links us so intimately to nature, their eloquence is optimized. Our eye is invited to wander, to take delight, to regard these images with a pleasure that is voluptuous, almost carnal.
Translation : Käthe Roth