Personal projects portfolio

Marilyn and I. (in progress)

“Marilyn and I” started in June 2005 at the Julien’s auction house in Los Angeles where a friend of mine bought an authentic summer dress designed by JAX from the personal wardrobe of Marilyn Monroe. The dress has a strong evocative power. It became an essential element of my artistic project.

With it I wanted to find answers to the following questions: “Why does Marilyn continue to fascinate and interest so many people today forty five years after her death?”, “Why she?”, “What kind of relation do her admirers have with her image?”

To try to answer these questions I called on those who love Marilyn deeply, for whom she is larger than a famous Hollywood actress. With the dress folded in my photographer’s backpack I went to meet a lot of people at their homes and work places where I collected and recorded the stories of men and women of all ages and all social categories who share at least one thing in common – a strong personal emotional attachment to Marilyn Monroe.

I started with a French fan club. I then posted ads in printed media and on the Internet. For all those people who became my models, the encounter with the dress which touched the body of their idol was very emotional. With my camera I tried to capture that emotion. The dress served a material evidence of the passed existence of Marilyn. It was a moment when the real met the imaginary because for most of my models Marilyn existed only in photographs, movies and of course in their imagination. And for me, the dress was a pretext for doing something I enjoy most in my profession – photographing people.