There is no reason to compare Laura Henno's work to that of other photographers, as her art is rather situated between painting and cinema. From these early portraits, which benefited from the influence of Vermeer and the pictorial tradition of the Northern School, one will keep in mind an elegant softness discreetly broken by the subject itself, its everydayness, and the dramatic tension that the artist imposes at the moment of shooting on these adolescent figures.
In fact, from the very beginning, she acted like a director by inviting models to embody characters who were far from themselves. At the beginning, it was even imperative for her not to know them too well in order to achieve her strange photographic scenarios. Over the years, the artist became so close to her models that she eventually bonded with one of them, creating a set of portraits that span her adolescence.
In recent years, she has become involved with them, and has taken their own stories and transfigured them with a form of photographic heroism. The images taken in Dunkirk in a medical and psychological center for adolescents are portraits of a disturbing humanity. The young girl engulfed in her pink blanket (On hold) acquires the same sensitivity as an early image (Rainy silence) of a child trapped in a morning dread, whose steely blue gaze pierces you with its uncertainty. In the same way, they captivate, but in On hold an authenticity is added that emerges in a subtle imbalance between the aesthetics of the image and the reality of the drama that inhabits the subject.
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