Miscellaneous picks from 2017 to today.

Clients : Vogue Italy, Die Zeit, Usage Magazine, Malaika Raiss, Louise Damas, Contributor Magazine, Kozha Numbers, Friday Magazine, Cools Magazine, Causette Magazine, Boys By Girls, Esteban Cortazar.

I set up an experiment. I walked in the public space of my city (Lausanne, Switzerland), as for a week I transformed myself into a cis man, into my male alter ego. With the help of make-up, wigs, prosthetics, clothes, I slipped into the skin of another, of my other. I followed men, all body types and ages, and I copied their postures and body language. Trying to decipher what is this ‘masculine attitude’, this ‘masculine body’ often referred to, stereotyped, full of obsolete codes. This project mixing performance, documentation (b&w images), texts and self portraits, is the result of an experience that is personal, and defined in time and space. It is not meant to define a general male or female experience, just mine, last year, for a moment. In the streets, in front of the mirror, I searched for answers : how looking like 'the opposite sex' will influence my attitude and my body in space? How will others look at me?
Installation images : Biennale de l'Image Possible (BIP), Liège, Belgium, 2020 + Photofestival Urbi & Orbi, Sedan, France, 2021.

I flew to Tokyo, Japan, in a hurry, like I was fleeing something. I wanted to know more about the current dating culture and where it was heading. Being generally interested in the mechanisms of love, I read about the very surprising, and sometimes intrusive ways the young Japanese people use to connect with each other (boyfriends for rent, hosts, cuddles for sale, ...). Therefore my initial plan was to get into Tokyo's night scene, and get into the deep corners of the internet, try out myself all the different ways you can date. But when I arrived ... I didn’t feel like conducting this rather aggressive approach anymore. I was fleeing something, or better said someone. While meeting young Japanese in Tokyo and Osaka, while getting to know Yuri, Natsuna, Yusuke, Chikuma, Kinu, Tae, or Kazumaza, I felt very emotional, reminiscing a heartbreak of mine. Slowly, I began to unravel my own secrets to my new friends, and collect theirs.

The sensation of feeling lost and disconnected to my surroundings made my obsession grow bigger. This obsession had a name : Martin. I tried to reconnect with him during that time, and was left with barely an answer : he had nothing to tell me. Talking to my new friends I often felt like all the words were lost in translation. But if we had nothing to tell, we had a lot to feel.

Installation images : Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 2020 – and Fotografie Forum, Franckfort, 2020.

French-Dominican photographer Karla Hiraldo Voleau grew up with one constant warning: “Never date a Dominican.” In ‘Hola Mi Amol’, Hiraldo Voleau returns to the Dominican Republic to cast her gaze on the bodies of the many men she meets, mostly men working in the tourism trade. There, she explores desire, sex, and love in this luscious, tender, and sexy debut. Her sensual, unstaged, mostly nude, photos of the men she connects with are punctuated by vulnerable self-portraits of their intimate encounters. Accompanied by short texts, ‘Hola Mi Amol’ unfolds into a story that is at once fierce, funny, and compassionate. In the DR without her mother, aunt, or grandmother (all of whom had fallen in love, married, or had a child there), and out of sight of her male relatives there, Voleau frees herself to the borders of what feels "allowed" in love, sexuality, and friendship. Inevitably, her document of this edge carries a trace of the often brutal loneliness of our times. Hiraldo Voleau’s curiosity about eroticism, virility, cultural and racial identities, and the status of the female-gaze vibrates through the pages of this sly and stunning debut.

Text by Bruno Ceschel.
Reading performance at Les Rencontres d'Arles 2019, image by Florian Amoser.
Installation Images : Foam Talent, Kulhaus Berlin, 2020.

Latin Lover is the second chapter of ‘Hola Mi Amol’. While both projects focus on Dominican men, Latin Lover portrays Dominican men living in the US, and more specifically, the Dominican community of New-York City – the biggest outside the Dominican Republic. It was in 2018 that I stayed in New-York City for 3 months, in order to meet as many young Dominican men as possible (or mixed like me).They would be born and raised in the US, or immigrated. With them, I started conversations about the social stereotypes applied to Latino men today. I asked them about their education as boys and as men, I asked them about their families. They would tell me about how they felt so distant from the idea of ‘the Latino man’, or even ‘the Dominican man’ as it’s portrayed today. A new generation of men has come to break the idea of hyper sexualized, overly masculine, macho man. They have come to deconstruct the myth of the Latin Lover. While in ‘Hola Mi Amol’ I aggressively dived into such stereotyped situations and characters, here I take a step back, and let the subjects take main role in the project. I wanted to show that there are many ways to represent masculinity while reversing the gaze. The result is a dance of dressing and undressing, of moving around a bedroom, as I wanted them to pose as they pleased, and to try to step away from the expected ways of presenting themselves to a camera, and to a woman.

Timo, Quentin, Nikolai, Samuel.

Anna and I tried to establish an intimate relationship without ever seing or talking to each other over a period of 4 months.

In Paris, she followed me everywhere, we exchanged gifts and handwritten messages without ever meeting. In The Hague, I took her place for her to disappear, I wore her clothes and lived in her house, spent time with her boyfriend and tried to become her, while she was watching. We met for the first time in Arles during the installation of our collaborative work. All our past actions were put under bright light, and the relationship we built from scratch finally felt tangible, for better and worse. What’s the limit between performance and real life ? How much are we replaceable?

This book gathers the photos we took during the experience and the letters and notes we wrote to each other to communicate.
Book graphic design : Jacopo Atzori.
Installation image : Les Rencontres d'Arles, 2017.