Finalist – Prix Picto de la Mode 2024 : Vanina Esdras

Vanina Esdras was born in Rouen in 1990. Her career in photography began with a work placement in press relations for the Visa pour l’Image festival. She then joined the advertising agency La Chose as an art buyer, before a meeting with the founders of the art brut magazine Hey! Modern Art & Pop Culture led her to leave advertising for a while for publishing. She returned to advertising in 2017 as a production manager at the 1718 and 37-2 Paris agencies. At the same time, over the years she has kept up her amateur photography. Using disposable Kodaks and an analog Olympus, she enjoys photographing her daily life, her friends, her evenings out and her friends at parties. In 2021, she embarked on a one-year photography course at EFET. Attracted by reflections, materials, shapes and colours, she naturally turned to still life. She is developing a body of work in which the use of objects, beyond their purely aesthetic appeal, serves to tell stories about ourselves and explore themes such as consumerism, ecological awareness and femininity.

“The series is made up entirely of scraps of leather from accessories and manufactured clothing. I try to create illusions, fantastical figures that can be animal or vegetable, terrestrial or marine. These creatures are both objects of contemplation and subjects of reflection. Who are they? Where do they come from? And what is their history? By giving a second life to these residues, I hope to raise questions – my own questions – about our consumption and our contradictions.”

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