L’Absente by Aëla Labbé takes the form of an extended allegory or visually alliterative verse. An ode dedicated to "absence" in all of its meanings; the missing, the lost, those disappeared or simply things invisible or out of sight. For the photographer, L’Absente holds a deeper meaning, more intimately connected to freedom; providing a door through which to free one’s mind and escape the commonplace.
Averted gazes and ambiguous gestures of partially obscured characters serve as powerful metaphors for the evasive nature of the unconscious. Ethereal images that probe the consciousness are imbued with the burnished hues of half-remembered dreams yet shimmer with a child-like nostalgia. Somber mise-en-scène that approach film noir in their cinematic quality are often reminiscent of the Kaidanshu or Kowai Hanashi of Japanese movies. Protagonists in a seemingly enchanted and occasionally possessed world find themselves entwined in landscapes into which the sun permeates only with a vaporous and indeterminate glow. Ultimately, L’Absente represents a somnambulistic journey into realms of mysticism and ritual that only the initiated can ever hope to fully understand.
First Edition
610 numbered copies
88 pages, 75 plates
21.0 cm x 26.0 cm
Hot foil embossed cloth covered hardcover
Offset Lithography
Éditions du LIC 2013
ISBN 978-82-93341-02-4
