The British photographer, based in Paris, explores the female gaze in narrative portraits that blend cinematic drama and pictorial aesthetics.

“Lying on his chest, I see those three words – ‘You Will Forget Too’ – tattooed among the mountains on the inside of his left arm. Words that have always haunted me. Will you forget me? Will I forget you? What memories will we keep? I withdraw from the present and look down at our scene from above, wrapped in each other in the dark.” This is the premise of You Will Forget Too, the new series of narrative portraits by Laura Stevens. This English photographer, a graduate of Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of Brighton, seeks to understand the human condition. For over a decade, she has explored themes of intimacy, loneliness, loss, and desire. Her feminine and autobiographical perspective attempts to represent our unexpressed inner selves in visual stories, for a deeper understanding of ourselves. Clearly, Laura Stevens' work, which is in the lineage of photographers of intimacy, such as Jo Ann Callis and Nan Goldin, quickly won over museums, galleries, festivals and the French and international press.

Intimate space

Following her series *A Latest Spring*, which captured the delicate and complex bonds of an extended family in a house in the South of France during the pandemic, Laura Stevens here explores the notion of coupledom even further. She immerses us in the reminiscences of a personal and romantic relationship. Her approach focuses on two bodies and the connection between them, questioning the memory of desire and its representation. All that remains in her compositions are the vestiges of unfinished and (im)precise moments that intertwine fantasies, dreams, and reality. These are intensely colored photographs, bathed in shadow and light, where cinematic drama vies with pictorial aesthetics. “So much passion in such a small space; that of a body, of love, and of possible futures. Escaping our grasp, always fleeting, evolving, and eruptive. For years, I have fought against these words written on your skin. But there is nothing to be done. We will forget.” "Yet we hold on," the photographer continues in her poetic and melancholic reflections. This virtuoso manages to immerse us in this atmosphere charged with carnal intensity and emotional tension.

Nathalie Dassa

laurastevens.co.uk