DESRIAUX_MELANIE_LA CONQUETE_17

When we start photography we can be influenced by some photographers and then with time others inspire us according to our evolution. What’s yours when you started and then later on ?  I studied at « l’école des beaux-arts » (Fine Art School). So my first look was at artists, whether they use images or other media. Then, I think that before being influenced I was grasped by the history of photography. The development of photography, which coincides with the first exploratory movements, played a fundamental role in visual access to the world and contributed to an increase of reality. The photographer responds to a thirst for glance, and to a need to organize, collect and archive an iconographic inventory. Applied to anthropology, ethnology or geography, photography is part of this survey of the world in which man constantly rethinks and redefines himself. If today the discovery of new territories as well as new civilizations seems limited, the unknown may reside in a human nature where the wild is always latent. It is therefore photographers who question this idea of exploration, both of the territory and of human nature, that interest me particularly. I have been marked by the work of Diane Arbus, Rineke Dijsktra, Sally Mann, Denis Roche and Garry Winogrand for example. Today, I am thinking in particular of the work of Mike Brodie, Sam Contis, Matthew Genitempo, Adam Jeppesen, Rinko Kawauchi, Christian Patterson, Alec Soth, Carly Steinbrunn, and Carleton E. Watkins.