This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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About the PhotographerKarla Hiraldo Voleau is a Dominican-French artist photographer, born in 1992. She has a master’s in photography from ECAL, Switzerland and a bachelor’s in design from Ecoles de Condé, Paris. Her photobook Hola Mi Amol was a finalist for Aperture’s First Photobook Award. She has received numerous awards and grants and been featured in many solo and group shows. Her exhibition Another Love Story was on view at the International Center of Photography from June 1 – September 11, 2023. |
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Truth in Photography: What makes you want to make a photograph?
Karla Hiraldo Voleau: I'm really obsessed with recording things and recording time passing. I'm really afraid of forgetting. Photography is just a tool for me to be sure that I don’t forget anything and that I collect memories after memories. Kind of like an obsessive quest of time stopping, maybe.
TiP: In terms of your obsession of recording things, how do you decide on what things you want to record and photograph?
Hiraldo Voleau: I have to say I'm very attracted to documenting the people that I love. I’m also very fascinated with weird lights or lighting situations. I only shoot with natural light. There’s just this nice moment in the day where there's this bouncing of light somewhere or this little detail on somebody that would be crazy bright or crazy dark. Light composition is what motivates me to take out the camera first, and then, as well, the people. I'm a portrait photographer more than anything. Portraits, self-portraits, humans in general. I would be inspired by a person, by their actions, how I see them when I love somebody. When I appreciate somebody, I want to celebrate them over and over again, and I tend to photograph them a lot.
Karla Hiraldo Voleau: I'm really obsessed with recording things and recording time passing. I'm really afraid of forgetting. Photography is just a tool for me to be sure that I don’t forget anything and that I collect memories after memories. Kind of like an obsessive quest of time stopping, maybe.
TiP: In terms of your obsession of recording things, how do you decide on what things you want to record and photograph?
Hiraldo Voleau: I have to say I'm very attracted to documenting the people that I love. I’m also very fascinated with weird lights or lighting situations. I only shoot with natural light. There’s just this nice moment in the day where there's this bouncing of light somewhere or this little detail on somebody that would be crazy bright or crazy dark. Light composition is what motivates me to take out the camera first, and then, as well, the people. I'm a portrait photographer more than anything. Portraits, self-portraits, humans in general. I would be inspired by a person, by their actions, how I see them when I love somebody. When I appreciate somebody, I want to celebrate them over and over again, and I tend to photograph them a lot.
TiP: Do you feel that in your work you're conveying a truth about the individual you're photographing?
Hiraldo Voleau: No. I’m conveying the truth about how I see them, but not who they are. I will just show my relationship with them and how we interact. But this will certainly not tell a lot about who they really are.
TiP: Let's talk specifically about the work that you made for the Love Songs exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP).
Hiraldo Voleau: Well, Love Songs. The thing is that the pictures were love songs originally. They were never made to be an exhibition to be seen by the public. Actually, they were candid photos of my relationship with X for one year. They were iPhone pictures and I think I should say that I take mostly my pictures with my phone. I have no problem with mixing analog with phone photography, I just will use any type of camera as an extension of my eyes. The original candid pictures were never made to be specifically aesthetic or to be part of a series in a group. Later I reenacted all the pictures with a doppelganger, with an actor.
TiP: So, the person in the photograph is not the real person that is the subject of the photograph.
Hiraldo Voleau: Yes, he’s the doppelganger. The lookalike of my ex, or an actor if you want.
Hiraldo Voleau: No. I’m conveying the truth about how I see them, but not who they are. I will just show my relationship with them and how we interact. But this will certainly not tell a lot about who they really are.
TiP: Let's talk specifically about the work that you made for the Love Songs exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP).
Hiraldo Voleau: Well, Love Songs. The thing is that the pictures were love songs originally. They were never made to be an exhibition to be seen by the public. Actually, they were candid photos of my relationship with X for one year. They were iPhone pictures and I think I should say that I take mostly my pictures with my phone. I have no problem with mixing analog with phone photography, I just will use any type of camera as an extension of my eyes. The original candid pictures were never made to be specifically aesthetic or to be part of a series in a group. Later I reenacted all the pictures with a doppelganger, with an actor.
TiP: So, the person in the photograph is not the real person that is the subject of the photograph.
Hiraldo Voleau: Yes, he’s the doppelganger. The lookalike of my ex, or an actor if you want.
TiP: Talk a little bit more about that idea of intent.
Hiraldo Voleau: The original images were just reportage of my life. They were candid, spontaneous pictures of a relationship. They were the proof, I thought, the proof of our love. Somehow these pictures tell no truth, because in the end, what this project is talking about is a betrayal and the discovery of a lie and how X had a double life. This picture shows a “perfect” love story: in the sunset, traveling, and being young and in love. In the end it was completely a facade.
TiP: How can you communicate love in a photograph?
Hiraldo Voleau: Love Songs was originally not an exhibition about love but rather about love stories experienced by photographers and visual artists. Therefore all the stories presented in the show are very autobiographical. At this moment in my life when I was asked to make a project about love, it was very easy for me to understand. I would have to talk about what I was going through at that moment because I had just discovered that my relationship was a lie and that I was in the middle of an affair. Double lives, crisis, tragedy with my partner in the middle of me building a show about love, so I decided to talk about this. Actually, the title is Another Love Story, but it's not a love story. This is a story about emotional abuse. This is a story about how to recover or how to re-empower yourself or empower yourself, when you have suffered tremendously from an emotional situation or when your life falls apart. This is a story about a woman's voice. This is a story about two women talking to each other. In this project, there is a conversation between the other woman and me, and this is maybe the only ounce of love that you would see in this project: two women respecting each other and believing in each other.
Hiraldo Voleau: The original images were just reportage of my life. They were candid, spontaneous pictures of a relationship. They were the proof, I thought, the proof of our love. Somehow these pictures tell no truth, because in the end, what this project is talking about is a betrayal and the discovery of a lie and how X had a double life. This picture shows a “perfect” love story: in the sunset, traveling, and being young and in love. In the end it was completely a facade.
TiP: How can you communicate love in a photograph?
Hiraldo Voleau: Love Songs was originally not an exhibition about love but rather about love stories experienced by photographers and visual artists. Therefore all the stories presented in the show are very autobiographical. At this moment in my life when I was asked to make a project about love, it was very easy for me to understand. I would have to talk about what I was going through at that moment because I had just discovered that my relationship was a lie and that I was in the middle of an affair. Double lives, crisis, tragedy with my partner in the middle of me building a show about love, so I decided to talk about this. Actually, the title is Another Love Story, but it's not a love story. This is a story about emotional abuse. This is a story about how to recover or how to re-empower yourself or empower yourself, when you have suffered tremendously from an emotional situation or when your life falls apart. This is a story about a woman's voice. This is a story about two women talking to each other. In this project, there is a conversation between the other woman and me, and this is maybe the only ounce of love that you would see in this project: two women respecting each other and believing in each other.
TiP: In terms of these reenactments, are the photographs intended to be a series, or is it intended to be where you look at a single image as a metaphor for the broader experience?
Hiraldo Voleau: I think one single image has not much power, at least in an exhibition. In an art exhibition, the series and the cloud of images and the group of images will give a little bit of truth. This is why you see this project as a grid of images, a group of images. They are categorized by months, and you can zoom in and zoom out, but you will see a color palette for each month. You will see a glimpse of how our relationship was in that moment with X through the way that I photographed it. You see the evolution through the year of my relationship with him. It definitely works as a series only. As for the reenactment, it is pretty basic. I took all the pictures of my relationship with that person for a year, categorized them in months, printed them out, selected them and grouped them then and there. Later, I had to be a producer, casting director, lighting assistant, location scouter, photographer, stylist, everything at the same time in order to remake, inch by inch, every picture where the face of X was appearing.
TiP: Why do you only photograph in daylight?
Hiraldo Voleau: I think sunlight is the most beautiful light you can ever get. I don't enjoy so much being in a studio.
Hiraldo Voleau: I think one single image has not much power, at least in an exhibition. In an art exhibition, the series and the cloud of images and the group of images will give a little bit of truth. This is why you see this project as a grid of images, a group of images. They are categorized by months, and you can zoom in and zoom out, but you will see a color palette for each month. You will see a glimpse of how our relationship was in that moment with X through the way that I photographed it. You see the evolution through the year of my relationship with him. It definitely works as a series only. As for the reenactment, it is pretty basic. I took all the pictures of my relationship with that person for a year, categorized them in months, printed them out, selected them and grouped them then and there. Later, I had to be a producer, casting director, lighting assistant, location scouter, photographer, stylist, everything at the same time in order to remake, inch by inch, every picture where the face of X was appearing.
TiP: Why do you only photograph in daylight?
Hiraldo Voleau: I think sunlight is the most beautiful light you can ever get. I don't enjoy so much being in a studio.
TiP: How did you get started as a photographer?
Hiraldo Voleau: Well, I studied for a long time in art school, and I ended up randomly doing a bachelor’s in photography after I started a bachelor’s in design. Both my grandfather and grandmother were photographers at some point in their lives. It was different, it was not art photography, but I guess we always had good pictures laying around. I wanted to tell stories in either writing or photography, painting, drawing. I explored a lot of things and photography just made sense for me because I could use my body as well and my identity. The self-portrait aspect of photography is important for me in the sense that it's performative, allowing me to reinterpret my own past experiences.
TiP: In your work you’re exploring issues of gender, culture, identity, and your own identity. Could you talk about that?
Hiraldo Voleau: Yes, anything that has to do with intimacy. I don't have a master plan, I just go with the topics that I find interesting, or that appear a lot in my life. Now I'm working on a project about the illegality of abortion in the Dominican Republic, so it still has to do with the intimate sphere, only this time it’s also a political subject. This approach goes with my understanding that the intimate is political, or at least can be. What that means is that if you look at yourself in the private sphere, you will look at a reflection of society, to some extend. When we look into our beds, into our couples, into our sexuality, into our friendships and relationships, we are telling a lot about how our society around us works, how politics work, and how we see the world. It also means we can shape the world around us through our private actions.
Hiraldo Voleau: Well, I studied for a long time in art school, and I ended up randomly doing a bachelor’s in photography after I started a bachelor’s in design. Both my grandfather and grandmother were photographers at some point in their lives. It was different, it was not art photography, but I guess we always had good pictures laying around. I wanted to tell stories in either writing or photography, painting, drawing. I explored a lot of things and photography just made sense for me because I could use my body as well and my identity. The self-portrait aspect of photography is important for me in the sense that it's performative, allowing me to reinterpret my own past experiences.
TiP: In your work you’re exploring issues of gender, culture, identity, and your own identity. Could you talk about that?
Hiraldo Voleau: Yes, anything that has to do with intimacy. I don't have a master plan, I just go with the topics that I find interesting, or that appear a lot in my life. Now I'm working on a project about the illegality of abortion in the Dominican Republic, so it still has to do with the intimate sphere, only this time it’s also a political subject. This approach goes with my understanding that the intimate is political, or at least can be. What that means is that if you look at yourself in the private sphere, you will look at a reflection of society, to some extend. When we look into our beds, into our couples, into our sexuality, into our friendships and relationships, we are telling a lot about how our society around us works, how politics work, and how we see the world. It also means we can shape the world around us through our private actions.
TiP: Could you talk a little bit about the feminist movement in the Dominican Republic?
Hiraldo Voleau: It's growing, it’s finding a more mainstream outlet through the younger generations and through social media. In the “real world,” I also love seeing protests getting bigger on International Women’s Day every year, and Dominican women being more vocal about their rights. On the other hand it seems to me that it’s still a door-to-door feminism, and I see a lot of actions being led on a very local and small scale. If you want to make things happen, you kind of have to build up everything on your own, with your money and your own courage. Take your car with your partners and organize councils and talks in different villages around the country. A lot is changing, only slowly.
Hiraldo Voleau: It's growing, it’s finding a more mainstream outlet through the younger generations and through social media. In the “real world,” I also love seeing protests getting bigger on International Women’s Day every year, and Dominican women being more vocal about their rights. On the other hand it seems to me that it’s still a door-to-door feminism, and I see a lot of actions being led on a very local and small scale. If you want to make things happen, you kind of have to build up everything on your own, with your money and your own courage. Take your car with your partners and organize councils and talks in different villages around the country. A lot is changing, only slowly.
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