Elsa Leydier
Braços Verdes e Olhos Cheios de Asas (Green Arms and Eyes full of Wings), features vernacular images of the Amazon (postcards or press images that contribute to the construction of the imaginary of the place) along with photographs I took while experiencing the Amazon territory. I freely revisited them through montages, collages, and plastic and digital interventions. The image of the Amazon then appears as a visual construction. My goal here wasn’t to represent the Amazon itself, neither to invite the viewer to become immersed into the greenery of the Amazon, but on the contrary to remind him the surfaces of its representations, and its images as constructed, often fantasized. This work is an attempt to explore not a territory, but its visual representations and the mechanisms that drive them.
Elsa Leydier was born in 1988 in France. After studying languages, she entered the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles in 2012. She graduated in 2015, and now lives between Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Lyon (France). In her photographic work, she aims to interrogate images that are used to define iconic places and territories, and tries to show them from other points of view, through the prism of alternative and lesser stories. Her work has been shown in several shows like in Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie (Arles, France), in Le Réverbère Gallery (Lyon, France), Chez Agnès b. and Les Filles du Calvaire Gallery (Paris, France), among others.