Anne-Laure Autin

Blood Line – Monograph

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I’m so very excited to announce the launch of my first monograph, Blood Line! (so excited I used Bold type which I’ve never done before!)

Kris Graves from Kris Graves Projects in New York contacted me after he saw a preview of my new body of work. He suggested we make a book together. I was a bit stunned – the series wasn’t even completed yet. But he had trust in the work. The past few weeks have been a bit crazy for sure. And today, we have a book! The design is finalised and I love it – I can’t wait for it to be revealed when it is out!

This past year has had its share of really high ups and really low downs for me. This is another moment where I wish my dad were here. My step-mom reminded me the other day of how impressed he was with what I had done with my life and work in the past 18 months – and my dad wasn’t easily impressed. I can just imagine his face had he heard that Blood Line was now also a book! I think he would have been just as excited as I am 🙂

Kris has all the details on his site and we are currently taking pre-orders for the next 30 days. To get your copy, just head over to Blood Line on KGP.

I want to thank Kris for this opportunity. And anyone who will get the book. Really, thank you – what an amazing way it is for me to honor my dad’s memory.

Blood Line

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Today I release my latest body of work. I feel many things at the moment, mostly emotions linked to seeing a year’s worth of labour coming to fruition. I am particularly proud of Blood Line. So are my daughters. Working on it together was a shared pleasure, also because we felt connected to my Dad when we did. Right now however I do experience a little tightening of the chest (or is it of the throat?) as the grief is still fresh. But I remind myself that when he saw the photographs a few weeks before his death, he loved them. I wish he were here. I think he would have been proud too.

Blood Line – Artist Statement

Once your parents pass away, you realise you’re next in line. My father was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the tender age of 64. In “Blood Line” I investigate how his inescapable disease and his death also affected my own life. I saw my father’s pain and felt my own. My subjects are my daughters, my flesh and blood, his descendants. He experienced, I processed, they embody.

With this work I address how terminal illness turns our lives upside down and affects communication and identity. When I was with my dad, he and I knew his days were numbered. I was able to say things I might not have shared before, but I also found myself withholding private thoughts. My version of reality and truth shifted. Blood Line illustrates the ensuing coding of language and our morphing sense of Self.

Life as I knew it was radically redefined and my personal definition of a photograph evolved. In much of the work, I altered the surface of my pigment ink prints with the medical supplies that overtook our lives, such as gauze, suture thread, eosin…, even my own blood that I drew from my fingers. I cut the prints with scalpels and tore them by hand. By lineage, I am the literal link between my father and my daughters. Now I am also that link through the work of my hands. A year later, he is gone, and when I am too, the photographs will still be there to connect us all.

Blood Line is a limited edition of 6+2AP.

All photographs below are photographs of the actual prints.

​Torn. Pigment ink prints, high gloss varnish.​ 2017. 16×24″ / 40x60cm
Fluff. Pigment ink print, hand-stitched gauze. 2017. 12×16″ / 30x42cm
Broken. Pigment ink print. 2017. 12×16″ / 30x42cm
Gravity. Pigment ink print, hand-stitched pills. 2017. 12×16″ / 30x42cm
Tub. Pigment ink print. 2017. 16×24″ / 40x60cm
All I see. Pigment ink print. 2017. 16×24″ / 40x60cm
Growth. Pigment ink print, non-dissolvable suture thread. 2017. 12×16″ / 30x42cm
Infinite Loop. Pigment ink print, my blood. 2017. 16×24″ / 40x60cm
Prescription (33 pills a day). Pigment ink print, scratched with eosin. 2017. 12×16″ / 30x42cm
They dwell. Pigment ink prints, photo-montage. 2017. 13×15″ / 33x38cm
Salt Solution. Pigment ink print, IV line. 2017. 24×36″ / 60x90cm
I wish I knew. Pigment ink print, dissolvable suture thread. 2017. 16×24″ / 40x60cm
Sesame. Pigment ink print. 2017. 8×12″ / 20x30cm
I nearly lost my mind. Pigment ink print, surface cut by scalpel. 2017. 12×16″ / 30x42cm
Don’t die. Pigment ink print. 2017. 24×36″ / 60x90cm
Fade. Pigment ink print, bandage and my blood. 2017. 8×12″ / 20x30cm
Lights out. Pigment ink print, surface modified with medical tape and my blood. 2017. 12×16″ / 30x42cm

Tributes to my father

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It is with infinite sadness that I share the passing of my father, Jean-Luc Autin, who closed his eyes for the last time last week on November 22nd. He fought in his last year a courageous battle against a cancer that we always knew to be terminal.

I posted a public tribute to him on the day of his passing on my personal facebook page, I have spoken at his service on Monday, please forgive me as I do not find the strength to do it again here today. Suffice to say that we & I loved him, tremendously.

I want to thank once more all of you who have written me, comforted me and shown me affection. I hope you will know how much I appreciate it.

When we heard about the diagnosis just over a year ago, our lives changed. After a few months, I started a new conceptual body of work called Blood Line. It addresses how terminal illness changes both communication and identity. I am almost done with it, it will be released soon and I have recently shared a sneak peek. But a few weeks ago, I submitted the photo Fluff to two organisations that I love, the Center for Fine Art Photography (C4FAP) in Fort Collins, Colorado and Don’t Take Pictures. I guess I wanted to gauge first impressions. 

I heard on Wednesday last week that Don’t Take Pictures was including Fluff in its Masks exhibit, which is on view till February 21st. It was the day after his passing. Yesterday I heard that Fluff will also be part of the Signature Image exhibit at the C4FAP, from March 3rd till April 1st. I am honored and humbled by both news.

I absolutely did not want to document my father’s cancer and I approached this work looking for more universal viewpoints. But I do not forget that it comes from an incredibly personal experience – that this works also stems from him, that it was made about and for him. It therefore feels like an incredible gift from the C4FAP and Don’t Take Pictures to see that Blood Line is already out there in the world thanks to them. They have given me an opportunity to honor my father’s memory this way as well and I am deeply grateful.

 
Fluff. Pigment ink print, hand-stitched gauze.

New work – sneak peek

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11 months ago my father nearly passed away from extreme complications on his first chemotherapy round. I was visiting him in France when it happened. After a month in the hospital he finally got home. Less than a week later he was taken back by ambulance with a life threatening infection, and as it happens I also was visiting then. The past year has been tough and I wish I could say that it’s been uphill from there. But that particular day with its particular circumstances has possibly branded me the most. I didn’t leave the hospital thinking I would do work about this; but somehow from that time onward I knew I would eventually.

That same week I had finished the Locked-in series. And 2016 can feel like it’s been a lot about getting that project “out there” – in the past fortnight alone I heard I’m in a show in NYC as well as one in Vermont and in the Berlin Foto Biennale (if you want to see what I’ve been up to in more details, you can check the CV I have recently added to my About page). But I actually spent a lot of my time making new work as well. I just haven’t shown any of it yet. So today I’m changing that with this small preview.

My new project is called Blood Line. It’s still growing and so I won’t share much for now. I can tell you that though it’s about terminal illness, it most certainly is not documentary work. You won’t see my father in any of the photographs. I can tell you that it’s been a profound challenge to address universal questions linked to such a personal experience and to do those justice with conceptual photography – but it’s also been an amazing process that I believe has helped me grow. So I hope you feel something with this first photograph of the series that I am sharing today:

​Torn. Pigment ink prints, high gloss varnish.​

 

 

Artist Talk on Locked-In for the Inglewood Fine Arts Gallery

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The PULSE exhibit has been extended to March 12!

This Saturday, Jeff Cruz, Royce Howland, Andrew Millar and myself held an Artist Talk on our respective works – about the thoughts behind it, the techniques used etc.

I didn’t fly again to Calgary but I was there remotely instead – and if you missed it, here’s the little video I made for the occasion!