Fournier, Valentine

France, 1973

Compulsive collector of 30’s to 50’s pictures, she revives these photo-moments from the past and stages them by inventing a story for them, by giving them a memory, in the delimited space of display boxes. These dioramas evoke everyday scenes in which the artist re-injects a good dose of fantasy, humor and childhood nostalgia. The influence of Jacques Tati’s comic and poetic staging and his attention to detail are also present in the imagination of the young artist. Her characters, ghosts resurrected from the past, are as familiar to us as the members of our own family.