Misplaced Kingdom, Anne Piqué
Anne Piqué is a fashion photographer living and working in Paris, France. As in her commercial work, Anne’s personal work is inquisitive, crystalline, and adventurous. Misplaced Kingdom is a personal project shot for TSUKI, and below is an interview conducted over email where we converse about this series, her process, and life in 2020.
TSUKI: These photos are cinematic, absurd, and yet pristinely shot. One thing they remind me of are the “Greek Weird Wave” films, which also explores ideas of lostness, misplacement, and rearrangement of power. Those films also often employ a confounding and unexpected visual logic—often in an absurd or humorous way. Seeing things “out of place” is a very reliable way to make an interesting image (I like it a lot!) but given the weird circumstances and limited conditions you created these images under, it feels even more bizarre. Can you talk about the challenges involved in making these images? Or might that ruin the fun? Maybe it was really easy to get a horse and a comedian to pose for you during a global pandemic? And what made you want to explore this visual tone?
ANNE PIQUÉ: I didn’t know about the “Greek Weird Wave” (as an umbrella term) but I do love Yorgos Lanthimos’ way of visually and psychologically distancing himself from his subject, similar to what Roy Andersson does, or even Jacques Tati to a lesser extent. It forces the viewer to think rationally, and reflect on the relationship between the character and his environment. That way, even despair can become kind of funny.
I was obsessed by the thought of photographing a horse in a very urban environment, but as a horse rider myself, I know that horses can be very skittish animals and no one in their right mind would take the time to groom their horse, battle with the horsebox, and then let me shoot it in this post-apocalyptic vibe. I contacted a few people that I knew—the answer was obviously “no”—and I even tried contacting an agency that specialized in working with trained animals. I was so frustrated and was starting to let go of the idea, thinking that I could maybe just use my dog and his dog buddies instead; they all look like strays, so maybe I could create some weird scenes in Paris. It was even more complicated! Fortunately, Fleur, a stylist that I’ve been working with had two horses that she rescued last year. She and her boyfriend kindly accepted, and we went to Ricardo Bofill’s Arcades du Lac hoping the police would not kick us out of the location.
Getting someone in a swamp dressed like an FBI agent from the 60’s was indeed not an easy task either. The whole comedian story is that I originally booked someone from an agency, but I think he got scared and cancelled two days before the shoot. This is my boyfriend on the picture. I think I would have been mad for the whole week if as a last resort I had been forced to shoot my boyfriend and my dog.
Through your lens, the overlapping overpasses feel like a fucked-up quasi-Brutalist cathedral or something. The blown-out white light through the concrete feels a bad Heaven; the curtailed greenery feels like a bad Earth. Maybe I’m reading too much into these images—but I’m having fun doing it! I’ve seen images like this before, but I like it in the wider context of, again, the carpark horse and the swamp guy. Very cool. I also appreciate your strong and strategic use of high-contrast black colors: the void beyond the horse, the occasional dark window, the backdrop to the shackled flowers, the swamp-wanderer’s slacks, etc. Can you speak to any of this?
I love your interpretation! I don’t want to give out too much about these pictures and give a specific meaning, as it would ruin all the possibilities that they can evoke to certain viewers.
Ok then, so of what relevance or importance is using built and/or natural elements in your photography, separately or together?
The overlapping of architecture, mostly concrete, and natural elements sure gives an elegiac evocation. It’s like time gently rubbing away the ruins built by humans. It becomes an in-between world, like the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker.
What keeps you interested in photography? Or, how do you keep photography interesting for yourself? Especially in 2020, or during 2020, or more like… enduring 2020?
2020 feels like being punched angrily by small children. The one thing that I feel grateful for in 2020 is patience. Like many photographers working in fashion, I’m used to delivering 15 sometimes even 30 pictures a day and I’ll often find myself working on autopilot. There’s no way I can produce meaningful work in this way, and while I understand that this is not the main concern for clients, as an artist it can be quite debilitating. So now that I’m working on this ongoing series, I’ll be more than happy if I get two good pictures a day. Hopefully, by changing my process in producing images I might get closer to what I want to convey with photography.
These images particularly use strong formal and calculated elements—they don’t feel accidental, but also this staged-ness doesn’t erase the mystery, but rather sort of intensifies it, and enhances the effect. What does the starkness and clarity of the composition and assemblage of the image mean to you? Or perhaps, how have you used it?
Franz Kafka’s The Trial is one of the books that had and still has the biggest impact on how I want to visually portray my pictures. I feel that his very formal, almost grotesque depiction of bureaucracy is a very fitting metaphor for the unwritten rules that we’re trying to follow in order to make our existences meaningful. It’s like a constant battle between cold, calculated order and chaos. It’s an absurd and terrifying thought, but there’s something precious about a striving figure.
Right, but this horse isn’t galloping or frolicking in a field, and that businessman isn’t trying to get out of the swamp—if you know what I mean. There’s a looming sense of stasis or stuckness, perhaps? Is that directly related to being literally locked down or quarantined? And does it apply to ideas beyond that? I see it in these images ranging from the obvious severity of the chains to the more subtle stillness of the horse versus the turn of the horse’s head toward whatever is (or isn’t) out of frame. Does this make sense?
You’re absolutely right! Quarantine certainly enhanced the growing feeling of being stuck in an undesirable situation, even more so since the Black Lives Matter movement continued to not only shine a light on the racism still rooted in many countries but also amplified that sense of injustice and helplessness towards tone-deaf institutions/government.
At first I wanted to approach this series of photos as visual metaphors for the main issues that society is struggling with right now, such as the environmental and social crisis, the growing disparity of resources, diplomatic issues, etc. After a few unsuccessful attempts I realized it was a bit complicated to make all these pictures feel like they belonged to the same series, so I stuck with the common denominator: absurdity.
My dad was kind of an explorer; he had worked with Jacques-Yves Cousteau as a cameraman and followed him on different expeditions all around the world. Although Cousteau’s work as a conservationist is now subject to controversy, I believe my dad was the one who transmitted to me his passion for nature. Our relationship to nature is a great way to explore and portray this irrational, illogical way of organizing town planning. Making our cities “green” in response to the destruction of natural habitats seems like a perfect example of twisting problems.