Series description
In 2022, much of the world reopened, and I could finally continue some of my long-term projects that had been interrupted by the Covid crisis. These images are a collection of contrasting moments found on the way: a Cuban actress shines in the Havana night; a woman about to turn 100 recalls the Soviet famine that took her father; a young girl crowned with dandelions embodies the spirit of youth. 2022 was a cruel year in many ways, but the possibility of encountering people again and listening to their stories was genuine solace.
Biography
Raised in a secretive Parisian family, Marylise Vigneau developed an early taste for investigation and justice.
What captivates her is how human beings are affected by borders, both physical and mental, this fugitive space where an unexpected, bold and fragile act or a glimpse of freedom may arise.
She works on long-term projects to explore memory and place. She likes to photograph moments of tenderness in places saturated with history and socio-political tensions.
She is represented by the Anzenberger Agency
Juana, Havana, Cuba, February 2022
Juana plays with her nephew’s boxing gloves on the staircase of her building. Since the economic reforms in 2021, finding food without having foreign currency has become an ordeal. She barely manages to feed herself and is increasingly angry. Once, in 2015, I gave her a perfume bottle, and she kept it like a treasure. ‘Smelling it is medicine for me’, she says.
© Marylise Vigneau, France, 2nd Place, Professional competition, Portfolio, 2023 Sony World Photography Awards
In My Dreams, Lahore, Pakistan, December 2022
This image was born out of a night of insomnia during which I imagined a series staging a ‘sehra’ in the old city of Lahore. A ‘sehra’ is both a headdress worn by the groom during Pakistani weddings to ward off the evil eye, and a poem in praise of the groom.
© Marylise Vigneau, France, 2nd Place, Professional competition, Portfolio, 2023 Sony World Photography Awards
Portrait of a Veteran, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, May 2022
World War 2 veteran Acek Urmanbetov (98) is recovering from Covid. He is reluctant to evoke the war, but remembers the leg he lost in Belarus, the people he shot and the dead rotting in the trenches. He follows international politics and is devastated by Ukraine’s current war.
© Marylise Vigneau, France, 2nd Place, Professional competition, Portfolio, 2023 Sony World Photography Awards
Heroes, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, October 2022
A moment in the Cambodian countryside.
© Marylise Vigneau, France, 2nd Place, Professional competition, Portfolio, 2023 Sony World Photography Awards
Mystery Solved, Lahore, Pakistan, December 2022
Lahore is infamous for its constant electricity breakdowns. This hand, found in the premises of a local church, may be the culprit.
© Marylise Vigneau, France, 2nd Place, Professional competition, Portfolio, 2023 Sony World Photography Awards
Chritsmas Eve, Lahore, Pakistan, December 2022
A little girl is lost in thought on her father’s motorcycle in a Christian neighbourhood of Lahore.
© Marylise Vigneau, France, 2nd Place, Professional competition, Portfolio, 2023 Sony World Photography Awards
A Very Long Life, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, April 2022
Maria Kudryavtseva was born in 1923 in the USSR to Ukrainian parents. The Soviet famine of 1933 killed her father and she had a tough childhood, sometimes begging for bread or cleaning houses. At 16 she was sent to Kyrgyzstan, where she would spend all her life. During World War 2 she became an operator for the ambulance train, picking up wounded soldiers all over Central Asia.
© Marylise Vigneau, France, 2nd Place, Professional competition, Portfolio, 2023 Sony World Photography Awards