Floriane De Lassée — À propos — Slash Paris

Go out of the cities. Take the off-road, take the trails and look elsewhere. Think far, watch in a different way.

But before leaving, look back, or rather backwards, at these cities which have fascinated Floriane so much. Not towards the sky and buildings anymore, but inwards, at what connects the city, her city, Paris, and its interaction with us.

Watch the bridges, the water, the Seine river, and turn everything upside down.

Reverse everything, break the habits and focus on the meandering river.

Play «Carnival» for a day and completely reverse the values and bearings : the Bourgeois are now simple peasants and craftsmen have become the great men of the Kingdom. Use that new freedom to expand our own field of vision and turn our life upside down.

A final tribute to the city before the departure, and the journey that Floriane de Lassée long wanted. From this trip around the world, the photographer will bring the series How Much Can You Carry?, based on Floriane de Lassée’s fascination for the long lines of women walkers, carrying diverse and bulky objects all along African roads. Started in 2012 in Rwanda, and still on-going, this series spread out to 4 continents, covering around 15 regions to this day, within 7 countries (Rwanda, Ethiopia, Nepal, Japan, Indonesia, Bolivia, Brazil), and more to come.

Trough these simple and authentic photographs (focused framing, minimalist lay-out in front of a bed sheets used as background for the image), the Artist takes the portrait of these carriers of the four corners of the world. She proposes each one of them to stage themselves with what counts most to them. And in these poor communities, what matters most are always first necessity products or consumption goods : sacks of grains for the farmer who must sell his crop in the nearest city to feed his family, bales of straw to be traded for a cooking pan, empty bottles to be recycled, tens of kimonos for the tourist shops…

Leaving misery on the side, the models show a unique sense of curiosity, fun, and often pride, in staging themselves, proud to put forward what can be considered in lots of cases as their only survival means.

And looking at these portraits, the complicity with the Photographer, and the pleasure of performing, the pride of seeing oneself, heroic, modern caryatid, sustaining on one’s head a life of consumption like mountains on one’s head, have taken over the pure tribute to a crushing labor, and finally take us onto an odyssey of a rare humanity.