Slab City, USA by Marie Sauvaitre

Marie Sauvaitre
Currently residing in New York, NY

Website
www.mariesauvaitre.com

Work Statement

Reflecting on globalization, mobility and the new roles of borders, ERRANCES - French term for something between exile and wandering - explores and pays homage to nomads’ home through color landscape photographs.

For months I traveled across cultures and continents, living amongst nomads, while creating a poetic visual evidence of their “homes�. Starting in Jordan’s Bedouin tents, to Slab City’s trailer parks in California, through the gypsy outposts of Beauduc, France, I then explored New York and completed my photographic journey in Israel’s Negev desert.

From my own experience of exile, I am drawn to these tensions between the pulls of nomadism and the search for the feeling of home. When looking at nomadic dwellings, I am touched by their vulnerability, their transience and the enigmatic play between interiority and exteriority that they engage with the landscape in which they integrate.

My belief in the social responsibility and moral agency of the artist made me choose these places carefully: they cover various regions (the US, Europe, the Middle East) and religions (Muslim, Christian, Jewish). By juxtaposing these economically and religiously contrasting cultures in my images, the arch-narrative of the project goes against a dichotomization of the world. My goal is to challenge the viewer’s curiosity for nomadism, and in a bigger scheme, “Otherness�.

In today’s hybrid post-modern world, one must welcome difference, tolerance and the cohabitation of antagonisms.

Bio

Marie Sauvaitre is a French photographer, now residing in NYC.
After graduating with an MBA from the University of Houston in 1994, she obtained her MFA Photography from the NY School of Visual Arts in 2005.
Her fine art work has been shown since by various galleries in:
- New York: in 2007 in Chelsea at the Robert Steele and Mixed Greens galleries, in 2006 at the Storefront for Arts and Architecture and in 2005 at the Exit Art Biennial.
- Buffalo: Chautauqua Center for Visual Arts and
- California: Richard L. Nelson Gallery, Davis.
Her editorial work is published in magazines internationally (Photoeye Magazine or Time Out New York - USA, Masa Acher - Israel, Korean Photography - Korea, Il Corriere della Sera - Italy) as well as in books such as: Title TK (Anarchive Publications France), New York Downtown Style (Garden City, Taiwan) and Witty Design Objects (Garden City, Taiwan).
Over the past two years, she expended her teaching experience to being a Guest Lecturer in Undergraduate Photography, as well as an Adjunct Professor for Graduate Photography, at the NY School of Visual Arts.