the Alphabet
In a world that polices, exploits and censors the body,
Pauline Faieff answers with a radical gesture: she gives it back its voice.
the Alphabet is a complete visual language, twenty-six photographs, one letter per image, each shaped by the human body alone, each paired with a poem. But its true subject is power: the power to inhabit your own body, to reclaim your own image, to be seen on your own terms, without fear, without permission. the Alphabet turns the body back into language, a language that belongs to everyone, and hands each of us the right to write it.
The work was born in Martinique, where the artist grew up, over eight months and three solitary sessions. Pauline Faieff returned to the very place where she was once made to feel small, and stayed until the body could finally speak: no artificial light, no makeup, no staging. What emerged is not the portrait of one woman, but a tool anyone can pick up, a way of looking at one's own body with tenderness instead of judgment.
Rome is the first breath.
the Alphabet does not ask to be admired. It asks to be joined.
the Alphabet
In a world that polices, exploits and censors the body,
Pauline Faieff answers with a radical gesture: she gives it back its voice.
the Alphabet is a complete visual language, twenty-six photographs, one letter per image, each shaped by the human body alone, each paired with a poem. But its true subject is power: the power to inhabit your own body, to reclaim your own image, to be seen on your own terms, without fear, without permission. the Alphabet turns the body back into language, a language that belongs to everyone, and hands each of us the right to write it.
The work was born in Martinique, where the artist grew up, over eight months and three solitary sessions. Pauline Faieff returned to the very place where she was once made to feel small, and stayed until the body could finally speak: no artificial light, no makeup, no staging. What emerged is not the portrait of one woman, but a tool anyone can pick up, a way of looking at one's own body with tenderness instead of judgment.
Rome is the first breath.
the Alphabet does not ask to be admired. It asks to be joined.