PhotoBook Review on "Quand même / Anyway / Trotzdem"
"Dorothée Lebrun's beautiful book is as much about remembrance as it is about humanity, so we must draw inspiration from it..."
This text written by photo book reviewer Frédéric Martin was published at 5, rue du, Chroniques de livres photos on Dec. 27, 2023 and translated from French.
The Eye of Photography published the critique and more photos on Jan. 17, 2024.
In Quand même / Anyway / Trotzdem, published by La 21ème saison, German photographer Dorothée Lebrun documents the special period of the first lockdown. Moving away from other more conventional works produced during this time, she created portraits of her neighbours in the Saint-Cyprien district of Toulouse.
Quand même / Anyway / Trotzdem offers 42 portraits, 42 visual memories from those 55 timeless days.
In one image, two of her neighbours pose in front of a white sheet: the man wears clothes covered in paint whilst holding a paint roller and the woman holds a rag and spray in her hands, seemingly ready to clean up the marks he has left behind.
Sometimes she is alone in front of the same white sheet holding a radio, or there is another person with a guitar, or a couple with children, each person doing their own thing.
42 times the same device and still 42 different existences.
That is what it is all about: whilst France is covered in a strange cloak of lockdown, whilst our movements are limited to a radius of 1 km, whilst we need permission to go shopping, we all had to carry on living anyway. And in this process, we had to reinvent everyday life in our own ways. Of course, it was not all that easy, with no landmarks, no links, no work, no social life, the television broadcasting its repetitive morbid litany, and the fear of this invisible virus hanging over us. But little by little we get organised: through weeding neglected flowerbeds, cooking once again, and rediscovering reading, music, joy, and our loved ones.
Dorothée Lebrun has seized on the abundance of life in her photography and carries it on into the aftermath of the lockdown. With a nod to the photographer Stephan Moses, Lebrun’s series of portraits also brings the work of August Sanders to mind. In a few decades time, we will surely have forgotten a large part of those locked up days and how we spent them. The photographs, the book itself, will serve as a reminder of that time, of that history, just as the photographs taken by Sanders captured German society of his time.
We lived through the lockdown, and we can hope that this temporary hazard will never return. But what could be more important than keeping a record of it? Above all, what could be more important than keeping the memory of what we did at that time?
Dorothée Lebrun offers us a remarkable body of work, work in which the tenderness and fraternity, that we frequently see lacking in our human societies, shines through. All too often, we forget those around us, neglecting them so that we can rush through our busy lives. And yet there is a humanity that we rub shoulders with, friends, loved ones, so many lives that should not be forgotten. The lockdown could perhaps have served, if not as a trigger - for that famous world after that was promised but never came -, then at least as a wake up call. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
A work such as Quand même / Anyway / Trotzdem offers a second chance to reflect on what surrounds us, to return to the fraternity that should underpin our lives.
Dorothée Lebrun's beautiful book is as much about remembrance as it is about humanity, so we must draw inspiration from it...
Hola , Fascinantes Fotografías. Un Saludo.