Emilie ARFEUIL
Photographer

Emilie made the portraits of the talented young people supported by Porosus in 2015.

What is your artistic background ?
I started photography as a teenager. I photographed and filmed all the time without any technique, a sort of totally disordered diary where the aim was to record everything to compensate for my failing memory. During my cinema studies, photography continued to captivate me and I gradually learned how to tame it, I experimented a lot. Thanks to luck and some nice encounters, I then started to work in fashion and advertising at a very young age, even though it was not my culture and I had never even opened an issue of Vogue. I learned a lot technically, with studio settings and very complex lighting. It's a very playful approach to photography, where everything is perfectly mastered. At the same time, as if to balance the scales, my personal photography gradually returned to something more intimate, pure and raw; I felt the need to put myself in danger and not to control everything. It was then that I began to make my first documentary series and to travel a lot.

How do you see your profession today ?
It's a bit of a cliché to say that the profession of photographer has been turned upside down over the last 15 years, with the advent of digital technology, new media, the press crisis, etc. Beyond the fact that it's harder today to make a living from photography, it's quite exciting to see this medium evolve constantly, to be open every day to a new mode of expression, to new techniques and modes of distribution.

How do you see yourself in 5 years ? In 10 years ?
I like the idea of not knowing! Above all, I like to think that we have several lives in one and that nothing is set in stone.

This interview was conducted in 2014
Photo credit: Emilie Arfeuil