Carolle Bénitah

Carolle Bénitah is a French-Moroccan photographer; she is known for working as a fashion designer for 10 years before switching to photography in 2001. Here her work mainly explores the ideas of memories, passage of time and family. She uses old family pictures and alters them slightly using different coloured threads and sometimes even cutting parts of the image out. She also tries to reinterpret the memories as a mother, daughter and wife. She is said to do these all these alterations to her images in order to help her understand her current identity.

Her work has been published in various magazines such as Leica World, Shots Magazine, Photos Nouvelles, Spot, Center for Photography Houston, Foto Noviny, and Lens Culture and more.

Analysis

Technical: Here the photographer has seemed to use flash lighting in this image which is shown through the highlights at the center of her face; however, it could also be outdoor lighting due to the reflection onto the wall behind her. Here there is a short depth of field onto her which is shown as that is the sharpest part of the image comparing to the background. Her image has a slightly higher sensitivity shown through the use of an old image which would have been taken with an older camera. Here the colours seem to be leaning on the warmer side due to brown wallpaper and the her skin tone. The image is 16.5 x 24 in. and is said to be an Archival Pigment Print.

Visual: Visually the colours of the photograph are quite toned down due to it be an older photo and not having the colour quality of many of today’s cameras; furthermore this highly contrasts between the rich red silk thread which has been used to alter this image. Texture is present through the use of thread and the over laying that has been creating as she used long pieces of thread, which I think gives her a unique style as I have not seen anything like this amongst other photographers which I think is quite important. Here once again due to the use of red string the image becomes 3D as the string is physically coming out of the photograph to recreate this image and show the models thought processes. The eye is first lead to the models eyes as that’s where all the thread starts and is lead down and onto the photo frame and back up to the top of the image to create a sentence.

Contextual: Here Bénitahs work is all about going back to her old memories and reinterpreting them so that they fit her current identity, it also helps her to show her memories in a more vivid format. The red thread creates a semantic field against her other photographs showing how they all once represented Carolle Bénitah and her younger life. Here every of her images are different creating a more distinct image with the addition of the thread to more clearly show her thought processes behind the image.

Conceptual: Here the Red Silk Thread vividly shows the models tears; here they lead to a phrase in french saying “il ne dit pas que je suis jolie” which reads “he doesn’t say that I am pretty”. This may well be the reason why she is crying. I love this idea as this might be her recurring thought whilst this image was taken. Here the image itself may be her trying to keep things altogether and not showing emotion however through the use of thread here emotions are now more visible and clear.