“A strange attraction” is a documentary series started in 2019. It traces my explorations in my home region, the Oise, and the region where I now live in the north of France. Between interior and exterior, private and public spaces, I went in search of anecdotes, details, and common similarities between these two places. Through silent photographs where only traces of human presence remain, I wanted to create several levels of meaning.
I first focused on what was suggestive, in an emotional rather than rational way. The objects and events come to life, they arouse intrigue, surprise, wonder, spark our imaginations, collective or childlike.
In a more rational way, it is in the countryside and cities where objects accumulate, the streets darken and the fields catch fire, that these photographs begin to raise more engaged, social, cultural, environmental or political issues. The images depict that marvellous and unexpected side of everyday reality, in which a more complex reality reveals changing places, impacted by the action of people on their environment, whether intimate or larger scale.
This series also questions the way in images are perceived, through multiple possible interpretations, and by their capacity to deliver or to pose answers.
Jade Joannes (b. 1994) is a French photographer working between Paris and Lille. Operating between documentary and conceptual photography, she first started taking pictures at the age of 13 and became interested in the concept of portraiture by placing the individuals, familiar or anonymous, and their environment or traces at the centre of her concerns.
Jade Joannes graduated from the Paris Cergy National Graduate School of Art in 2019. She has exhibited internationally, including Kyoto in Japan, Paris in France, and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. In 2021, she was selected as one of GUP’s Fresh Eyes talents and her project “A Strange Attraction” is published in June 2022 with AnotherPlacePress as part of the Fields Notes series.
© text and pictures by Jade Joannes
You can find “A Strange Attraction” book published by Another Place Press here