Pauline Caplet is a French photographer who specializes in portraits. She lives in Brussels, and works in the Studio Baxton. She has shown her early talent and a particular determination from the very start of her career. She draws her inspiration from the emotion of her models and her timeless portraits are full of history and reveal a particular poetic eye of the world around.
KALTBLUT: What is your definition of art?
Pauline: I don’t really have a definition of art, it’s more like a feeling that I have when watching a piece of art. I think the way people receive art depends a lot on their moods and cultural background. Art is the reflection of the artist’s thoughts, emotions and feelings at the moment he’s creating.
KALTBLUT: How do you decide what to take pictures of?
Pauline: In my work, I do essentially portraits. Sometimes I like to produce my shootings with make-up artists, stylists and agencies’s models. But sometimes I prefer to capture moments of life, without anything else, like I did for my reportage « Your Story ». where I went to a retirement house to speak with old people, discuss about their lives and after a couple of weeks started to take pictures of them.
For me, the important thing is to create a connection, an osmosis between the person and me.
Alsol, I try to make people projecting their own tale into my photos.
There is plenty of things that push me to take a picture : sometimes it’s just a place that I like, sometimes it’s a person that intrigues me, and so on. I’m also very sensitive to the outside light, it’s a large source of inspiration and for me, light is conditioning the final result a lot. You can really use it to tell a story without any words. I use natural light to enhance people’s energy, to show them as idols. I particularly enjoy to give that « something happened here » feeling when someone is watching my photos, it’s a big part of the mystery, and the viewer has to use his imagination in order to complete the picture. Sometimes I like to dig in the familiar, the casual and bring emotion inside my photos, but sometimes I’m more into creating surrealistic scenes, in a kind of a cinematic way.
All my photos comes from a feeling or a reflection that I have at the moment.
KALTBLUT: What would you say is the biggest thing that turned you to photography?
Pauline: I don’t remember exactly when I told myself « I’m going to do photography » but as for as I know I’ve always been attracted to images and art since my youth. While other kids were playing, I was constantly obsessed by all the things that surrounded me, and I was already quite aware of my environment. I always had that feeling that I needed to express myself through a certain form of art, something unique, and naturally, I fell into photography.
I did my first photo with a simple goal in mind : engrave those instants to make them live forever in my mind.
I remember that when I was 14 years old, I had this art professor at school who was a photographer, and he taught us how to create a small development laboratory. This experience in that darkroom has enlightened my future, I knew that I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. After two years in a photography school, I became independent and started working with photos as a full time job.
KALTBLUT: Any artists you admire and inspire you?
Pauline: My inspiration comes from famous photographers like Peter Lindbergh, Tim Walker, Annie Leibovitz, but I also have cinematographic inspirations like Tim Burton or Wes Anderson.
Interview by Amanda M. Jansson
