Yohanne Lamoulère - Villa Albertine

Visual Arts

Atlanta

“Atlanta seems perfect for hosting this project: it is the legendary birthplace of hip-hop, and its similarities with Marseille, a southern city, seem evident to me.”

Who?

I am a 43-year-old female photographer. I am a member of the Tendance Floue collective and the Zirlib company. After my studies at the École Nationale Supérieure de Photographie in Arles, and being fascinated by the work of Diane Arbus among others, I oriented myself towards a form of documentary photography. I arrived in Marseille through its peripheries and began to approach the city as a universal city, a privileged playground that still allows me to photograph what I call “the living” in a setting undergoing constant transformation. My camera records the city’s changes, especially noticeable in working-class neighborhoods, and I observe the strong connection people have to their neighborhoods.

Subsequently, I embraced fiction and staging within my photographic practice. What does photography tell us? Only the truth? What if we were allowed to lie, just as our bodies, our neighborhoods, and even the authorities do when they claim the city belongs to each of us? The result: a man in a tutu on a scooter, an Indian amidst his neighborhood’s buildings, a young woman languidly lounging with manicured nails coexist. The accumulation creates narrative. For reasons of sincerity and address, I blend my voice with those of the people I usually photograph. I don’t work without the city, nor without its inhabitants. Reality is always present, but so is the acceptance of subjectivity and collective storytelling.

Yohanne Lamoulère graduated from the École nationale supérieure de photographie in Arles in 2004. Her preferred themes are urban peripheries and insularity in its multifaceted forms. She published Faux Bourgs (Le Bec en l’air) in 2018, a compilation of her series on Marseille. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions: MUCEM (Marseille), Portrait(s) festival (Vichy), Fondation Schneider (Wattwiller), ImageSingulières festival (Sète), Clervaux-Cité de l’image (Luxembourg), and is included in public and private collections (CNAP, BnF, Neuflize-OBC). A member of the collectives Tendance Floue and Zirlib, she is currently preparing her first film, L’œil Noir.

What?

The questions raised by the deployment of Brass Bands in the United States seem to align with the project I have been working on for years in Marseille: community, “embodiment,” the link to the city and neighborhood, the relationship to discipline in challenged spaces, and the connection to costume, carnival, and more broadly, self-representation.

I will be following the daily life of several music schools, and just as I worked on embodying a universal city in Marseille, I would like to go beyond the local aspect of the bands to address adolescence, family ties, and collective identity through them.

I had the chance to attend a drumline competition in 2023 at the Music in the Park festival organized by Kebbi Williams in Atlanta. Each group of musicians practices and then parades, like a pre-fight parade, before facing off in a thrilling battle. This can be reminiscent of the Haka in rugby or certain performances in wrestling—an exaggerated, hypnotic spectacle that makes the scene both intense and amusing, allowing each group to collectively build a strong identity and view music as a performance and a means of self-transcendence.

I took photographs there, and it is a perfect medium for measuring oneself against others: the pride I observed in the teenagers’ eyes embraces the art of portraiture. The power of human representation stems from the desire to exist in front of the camera, from self-assertion. In this sense, the brass band and photography are made for each other.

Atlanta seems perfect for hosting this project: it is the legendary birthplace of hip-hop, and its similarities with Marseille, a southern city, seem evident to me.

Where?

I am in contact with three schools in different neighborhoods of the city where it would be possible to undertake this photographic series. These are Southwest Dekalb High School Drumline in Decatur, Tri Cities High School Drumline in East Point, and Jonesboro High School in Jonesboro. I would like to stay for two months and follow the teenagers through their schooling, as well as at home or during their leisure activities, to capture this Atlanta youth. I plan to work as I do in Marseille: with a Rolleiflex, in color, and taking the necessary time with the people I photograph. The best time for this would be during the school year and before the musical deadlines. This series would naturally continue my photographic work and allow me to further explore my reflections on the light emanating from the youth in working-class neighborhoods.

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