époque press
pronounced: /epƏk/
definition: /time/era/period
i came home
after eleven years
and things had changed
my father no longer presses fresh oranges every morning
for my mother for my sister
pour moi c’était un jus de pamplemousse
and i don’t go to school every morning anymore
i came home
after eleven years
and things were exactly the same
my father still empties the dishwasher every morning
setting up breakfast taking a shower getting dressed
my father buys the newspaper every morning
reading it at the café
always in the same seat
it’s a criss-crossing every morning
we sometimes don’t see each other until it’s past ten
mes matins ne se ressemblent pas
my father and i have lunch together almost every day
he drinks coffee and takes a ten-minute nap
every early afternoon
i came home
i don’t have every-day habits
a shower is not a habit
Alice JL Pierre is a Paris-based bilingual artist using photography and writing in her practice of Photoliterature. Her work brings together body, text and photography, as means to reflect on memory and family history, through the constant destruction and reconstruction of narratives.
Of the work featured here, Alice says:
‘This work began when I moved back into my parents' home, eleven years after leaving it. It has always been a very nourishing space in terms of creativity, and I quickly felt compelled to start making photographs of the multiple and diverse bowls used around the house. We, in this family, have always had some sort of relationship to bowls, ever since my parents, who are avid art collectors, started buying ceramics. For the first few months of my coming back to my childhood home, I observed the rituals born around these bowls, the childhood rituals gone and the ones still very much alive. Everything seemed to be simultaneously different and identical - distorted, in a way. This is what I attempted to represent through the photographs of the bowls, with a digital distortion of every photograph made of the bowls.’