Artist
Nina Medioni
Nina Medioni (b. 1991) lives and works in Marseille. In 2015, After graduating with an MA in Literature, she enrolled at the National School of Photography in Arles. Here, she developed an interest in documentary photography; in the image as a tool to meet the ‘other’. In 2019, Medioni spent several months with her Jewish Orthodox family in Tel Aviv, marking the start of her series, The Veil. The project has since been exhibited in both France and Israel. In 2022, she began the Un été au Prépaou series, which charts her encounter with a working-class neighbourhood in the city of Istres. She is currently editing her first film, Le Chalet, which studies the complexities of a neighbourhood surrounding her uncle's house – a seemingly misplaced cottage in the Parisian cityscape.
website: nina-medioni.com
Instagram: @ninamedioni
The Veil
The Veil questions both the religious and liberal youth Medioni met during her travels in Israel. Although the work was initially built around the daily life of her young Jewish orthodox cousins, it has expanded over the years to incorporate the stories of other young people she met along the way. With the series, photography became a way for Medioni to question her place as a foreigner – as a non-Jew. Her hesitation to include herself in Israeli society is represented by her focus on its diverse youth. By mixing images of her family with those of strangers, The Veil also investigates Medioni’s ambivalent relationship to her family, thus probing at our ability to establish intimate links with those who are distant from us.
Arno Brignon, for instance, utilises outdated analogue films – products of a past industry – and in doing so entrusts his photographic act to the erosion of the film, leaving room for the work of time. Damien Caccia thwarts the permanence of the photographic medium by the systematic alteration of the recorded image, in experimental works created with the aid of tools such a portable scanner. Marc-Antoine Garnier probes the two dimensional nature of the photograph, asking ‘Is it photography?’ while folding, assembling, piercing and brading paper, pushing our understanding of surfaces into new realms. And finally, in Nina Medioni’s work, the relationship between the photographed and the photographer is constantly reassessed, with the camera becoming a tool to record the people she encounters and the territories through which she passes.