Marylise Vigneau

Portfolio

Marylise Vigneau is a documentary photographer based between Austria and Pakistan.
Raised in a Parisian family with many skeletons in its cupboards, she developed an early taste for investigation and justice.

At la Sorbonne, her “Compared Literature” thesis was about cities as characters in Russian and Central-European novels; where and when the clearest narrative gets lost in a heady, haunting uncertainty.

Despite her fascination with literature, her mode of expression has become photography over time, without her knowing precisely why - maybe the mix of precision, immediacy, truth, and lies which is behind every image.

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ABOUT TIME OR THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND

In Havana, time sprawls its texture and shadow all over the city. Half a century of defiant isolation and embargo has done its work. The revolution seems to have been confiscated, the superb and sensuous fabric of the city has crumbled beyond repair, people have gone into exile, building a vivid absence, heroes have aged, Fidel is dead, swimming pools have been left empty, and disbelief and reluctance towards propaganda are everywhere.

Time has collapsed on this island-nation but seems on the verge of unwrapping. The Internet has opened a window that cannot be closed anymore. One senses a people yearning to escape this austere paradise and embrace the world. The Trump administration’s restrictions and the pandemic have slowed down the process, but ineluctably the island will build bridges with the rest of the world. These pictures are a melancholic homage to a revolution that once inspired many hopes and has demanded many sacrifices. There are about the impossibility of an island.