Some projects are simply extraordinary! This is the case of Isabelle Mège’s adventure. Model and performer, Isabelle Mège started more than 30 years ago a dialogue with some of the greatest photographers to build an outstanding collection of intimate portraits.

After Jeanloup Sieff, Willy Ronis, Jan Saudek, Joel Peter Witkin, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Édouard Boubat, Ralph Gibson, Henri Foucault and so many others, Catherine Balet contributes today to this remarkable series started in 1986.

And the result, a unique artwork playing with transparencies and surrealist collages, pictorial textures and digital photographic elements, enhanced by a touch of drawing, is magnificent!

“I had the idea of making a fragmented portrait of her
sitting on an armchair.”

“The image expresses ecstasy and anguish, vulnerability and strength; both, a foster mother with multiple breasts and a sensual, abandoned woman.”

“The creative process is long. I add, I deconstruct, I subtract, I superimpose. I like to work with time.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Catherine Balet began her artistic career as a painter before moving to photography in the early 2000s. Her photographic work then took on a sociological dimension. Her series of portraits of teenagers "Identity" and her series "Strangers in the Light" anchored her work in a contemporary reality. From 2013 to 2016, Catherine Balet worked on her series "Looking for the Masters in Ricardo's Golden Shoes" in which she paid a vibrant tribute to the masters of photography. From Nadar to contemporary trends, through Man Ray and Martin Parr, she has captured the history of photography, and looked for ways to reflect on its future. With her series "Moods in a Room", Catherine Balet continues her experimentation by reinvesting the technical transformations of the photographic medium and wonders about the border that separates painting from photography.

ABOUT ISABELLE MÈGE: At the age of 20, Isabelle Mège discovered the work of Jeanloup Sieff at the Musée d'art moderne and conceived what was to become an extraordinary artistic project. Over the years, she selected and contacted a large number of photographers, some famous, others less known, and offered to pose for them, preferably naked, in exchange for photographs. Jeanloup Sieff was the first, followed by Willy Ronis, Christian Courrèges, Jan Saudek, Joel Peter Witkin, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Édouard Boubat, or Ralph Gibson and Henri Foucault. With this unorthodox project, the model imposes herself on the photographers, chooses them and challenges them to put their creativity at the heart of a process of which she is the driving force. She becomes "THE" female subject, both unique and multiple. This multitude absorbs the character and makes her disappear as a person.Catherine Balet's work has now been added to this important collection of photographs, representing more than 140 images to date.

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