Interview with Carmen Winant

"I think about photography sort of less for its potential to convey beauty and be seductive [...] and much more for its sort of potential to instrumentalize a social movement."

Known for her collages and her work focusing on the representation of women, Carmen Winant has printed photos of women giving birth onto pages of the New York Times. The images blend into one another, mingling with the articles and merging in a single shot. For each image, Winant seeks out interesting political and aesthetic harmonies with a page from the newspaper. These fusions cancel out hierarchies, leaving only the relationships between the images.

With this series, the artist tells a story about the way in which women represent themselves and each other. This work is accompanied by a selection of feminist books proposed by Carmen Winant which complements Photo Elysée's library.

The Fall of The Modern Empire series is part of the Open Books exhibition on view at Photo Elysée from June 30 to October 1, 2023.