There's something pulsating in Simone Kappeler's photographs, something very alive. Cropped, blurred images, tight, cinematic framing, unexpected, sometimes slightly faded colors reminiscent of old photographs…

Far from the polished and meticulously composed "beautiful image," her photographs seem to be the fruit of a quest for spontaneity. Born in 1952 in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, Simone Kappeler has explored all types of photographic techniques since 1970, using a Hasselblad, a Leica, a Fujiflex, a Polaroid, or a disposable camera, using expired film or infrared and, more recently, cyanotype…

It is in this experimental and poetic approach that she captures fleeting pieces of life and bodies: a bare back facing a "coloured" mountain landscape (Painted desert, 1981), a nape of the neck in a car, an intrigued child's face behind a window, a Cadillac caught between dog and wolf in Beverly Hills, an upside-down face monumentalized by a tight, low-angle shot…

Like the flowers whose shadows she captures, everything seems to tremble and move; bodies even seem to elude her at times. What she seeks is to "capture life"... This is evidenced by her series of photographs taken during a trip across the United States in 1981, recently rediscovered, which immerses us in a world of sensations, an intimate vision of the United States before the internet and cell phones...

SIMONE KAPPELER IS REPRESENTED
BY THE ESTHER WOERDEHOFF GALLERY – 36, RUE FALGUIÈRE, PARIS 15TH
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