10 Questions with Emmanuelle Becker
Emmanuelle Becker is a visual artist and photographer based in Paris. She graduated with honors from George Washington University in Washington, DC, where she majored in photography and printmaking and then continued her studies with a master's degree in painting at the Pratt Institute in New York. Her photographic work is infused with this plural training and these different creative processes.
Emmanuelle Becker's work is frequently exhibited in Europe, Asia, and the United States, and she is the recipient of numerous international awards and distinctions. Her photographs appear regularly in specialized publications.
Emmanuelle Becker - Portrait
INscapes | Project Description
Emmanuelle Becker's photographic work explores the selective nature of memory and the impact of emotions on how the brain prioritizes and retains information. Becker has an intimist look at her subjects to create her singular dreamlike imagery. Her fascination with dreams and the unconscious is at the heart of her creative process.
Currently, Emmanuelle Becker has turned her interests towards landscape photography, developing a body of work titled "INscapes". Working with images taken during her various travels, she carefully selects moments and locations that possess what the artist calls a "mysterious captivating power". She then combines scenes, layers her images, and adds mixed media to create haunting landscapes that suggest mysticism and invoke contemplation and introspection.
Becker uses muted colors, soft eerie lighting, and unusual compositional approaches to lead the viewer through what seems like the very matter of memory. She often turns towards surrealist poetry and Japanese Haikus to accompany her recollections. Through her photography, Becker aims to connect with viewers on a deeper level. To paraphrase the words of the Surrealist author Philippe Soupault, INscapes is an inward voyage in search of inner landscapes.
INscapes 148, photography, 31x25 cm, 2023 © Emmanuelle Becker
INTERVIEW
First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. Who you are and how did you start experimenting with images?
My name is Emmanuelle Becker. I am a Franco-American artist who spent most of my adult life in France, though I grew up in the United States. I attended George Washington University, where I studied drawing, photography, and printmaking, graduating with Honors. Later, I earned a master's degree in painting from Pratt Institute in New York. While pursuing my fine art career, I worked as a textile and graphic designer. Though my artistic background is diverse, photography has become my preferred medium, and my earlier experience influences both the aesthetics and craftsmanship of my photography.
In my work, I explore the unconscious, drawing on memory and emotion to create a personal visual language that challenges and reshapes the viewer's perception of reality. I work in series, each time blurring the line between fantasy and reality to craft enigmatic narratives and visual metaphors.
How would you define yourself as an artist?
As an artist, I describe myself as an artist-photographer, working primarily with digital photography. I incorporate post-production software and often mix other media, such as drawing, sculpture, and painting, into my photographs. I reject the notion of fitting into predefined boxes and prioritize authenticity in my work, regardless of the subject matter or creative approach of the series I may be developing.
INscapes 107, mixed medium photography, 25x31 cm, 2023 © Emmanuelle Becker
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your artistic routine when working?
As an artist, I believe that change of scenery and travel are important for me. I often shoot a great number of images on my travels, and then back in my studio, I rediscover and connect them with past experiences. Sometimes, I leave these images untouched for months before working with them. I cherish the disorientation experienced while traveling—that feeling of strangeness or displacement from my usual environment. This temporary loss of bearings, caused by cultural, climatic, or landscape changes, encourages discovery and personal growth.
I would say that I work somewhat like a gardener, taking "cuttings" from different places and then use these snippets of images to elaborate what becomes my "memory" of a given place.
Being a productive and prolific artist, the creative process is fundamental to my being. I feel incomplete if I don't work in the studio every day. For me, creating is an form of externalized thought.
How much planning goes into each series of works?
Developing an idea or image is a continuous reflective process that happens all the time in my mind, even when I sleep. It involves introspection, which then collides with external impacts and surprises. My background as a painter, plays a significant role in my creative process. Pushing and pulling paint across a canvas is a wonderful experience, involving search and discovery. I apply this painterly approach in my photography.
INscapes 126, photography, 40x50 cm, 2023 © Emmanuelle Becker
INscapes 173, photography, 40x50 cm, 2023 © Emmanuelle Becker
You have a distinctive style, with eerie images and soft colors. Why do you use this visual language? And how has it evolved over the years?
Thank you for appreciating my unique style! I strive for authenticity in my work. I find the pure emotions expressed by unschooled artists in so-called "Outsider" art fascinating. I feel a profound connection with this unbridled approach to the creative process. I'm intrigued by dreams and the mysteries of the unconscious and how they weave into my work. Memories and dreams are of course intertwined, and I try to reproduce the nebulous colors and textures that I see in my mind. The subtle details and nuances in my photographs reflect what key aspects I choose to retrieve from my dreams and memories and how I reconstruct past experiences. And, of course, color conveys mood and provokes an emotional response in viewers.
Eeriness in photography can be created through various visual techniques such as the use of shadows, unusual angles, or distortions of scale or perspective. I do employ all of these methods. It can also be achieved through the subject matter of the photograph itself. Eeriness in photography is often associated with the psychological concept of the uncanny, which refers to something that is familiar yet also strange or unsettling. I digitally manipulate my photographs to give them an otherworldly appearance.
Let's talk about INscapes, your latest body of work. What do you hope that the public takes away from this series?
My aim is to create a visual language that inspires a sense of fascination, wonder and awe, inviting viewers to contemplation and introspection. The images in this series have a mystical quality that suggests transcendent states of consciousness. Through my landscape imagery, I hope to invite viewers to reflect on the mysteries of existence, drawing on universal themes and archetypes that resonate with people of all backgrounds and beliefs. In this light, nature, landscapes and wonderous architectural sites make for ideal subject matter.
INscapes 144, mixed medium photography, 25x31 cm, 2023 © Emmanuelle Becker
INscapes 155, mixed medium photography, 25x31 cm, 2023 © Emmanuelle Becker
Memory is another key theme in your production. How do you use it to create your images?
Photographs capture and preserve memories and emotions, serving as tangible reminders of our past and both personal and collective histories. They can also evoke memories and emotions of people, places, and experiences that we may have forgotten or not thought about for a while. And photographs become objects of memory and preservation themselves, as they are passed down through generations.
Memory is subjective and influenced by emotions, biases, and personal experiences. Two people may remember the same event differently due to differences in their perception, interpretation, and emotional state at the time of the event. Additionally, memories can be altered over time, sometimes unintentionally, through the process of retrieval and consolidation and the transfer of memories from short-term to long-term storage. Memories are not fixed, static entities, but are rather malleable and subject to change over time. Each time a memory is retrieved, it becomes susceptible to modification or distortion. When we recall a memory, we do not simply play back a perfect, exact replica of the original place or event; rather, we reconstruct the memory based on our past experiences, knowledge, emotions, and current context. Furthermore, as we recall a memory repeatedly over time, we may inadvertently alter it, either by adding or omitting details, or by incorporating new information that we have learned since the initial encoding of the memory. It is this reconstruction and consolidation process that I am very interested in and that I explore in my work. I hope to invite the viewer to reflect on his/her own memories and thought process.
Do you have any artists or role models that influence and inspire your work?
I have a deep appreciation for all kinds of artwork, but I am presently drawn to historical archaeological photography. Specifically, I find images from the 19th century that were created to document and record archaeological sites and excavations to be visually striking and culturally significant. These photographs not only capture the essence of the sites but also serve as valuable documentation before further damage or destruction occurs. The concept of preserving history and our planet is a relevant and engaging issue for many artists today.
Archaeological photography also plays a role in recording the stratigraphy, or layers of soil and sediment, exposed during excavation. I am fascinated by the idea that history is embedded in stone and rocks, and I collect stones from significant places during my travels and treasure them as tangible memories.
I also enjoy exploring the dialogue that can exist between an image and the written word. I like to incorporate poetry, especially Japanese haïku, along with my images. I find that the combination of an image and written text creates a more comprehensive experience for the viewer, allowing for a deeper understanding and connection to the image depicted. Images offer immediate and emotional visual representations, while words provide cultural and historical context, adding a poetic and personal dimension to the work.
I am also inspired by the Surrealist movement, in art and literature. Disciples of the movement had a unique approach to observing the world around them, as they sought to explore the subconscious and irrational ideas. For them, the landscape, for example, was not simply a picture of nature, but a means of expressing their unconscious desires, fears and fantasies. They often employed distortion, fragmentation and layering to represent the landscape in a surreal and fantastic way, mixing elements of nature with imaginary ones to create a dreamlike world. The observation of the landscape for the Surrealists was thus more profound and personal, involving an exploration of their own psyche. I certainly share this creative approach.
INscapes 153, mixed medium photography, 25x31 cm, 2023 © Emmanuelle Becker
What do you think about the art community and market?
Well, I would say that the search for recognition is a long and complicated process which for an artist and can be quite frustrating. I believe that fashion trends in the artworld can be detrimental to originality and to an artist's search for his/her personal voice.
Finally, any projects you are looking forward to for this year?
I am looking forward to continuing with INscapes and seeing where this body of work will take me. I have travel plans that I hope to accomplish, which are always a significant source of inspiration. And finally, I will be exhibiting my work this coming November in Paris, so this will be a great opportunity for me and others to have an overview of selected INscape images.
