About

Biography

Growing up in Lyon, France, in neighborhoods where poverty and graffiti were omnipresent, Carole Louvezy became interested in urban street scenes and the representation of human misery from an early age. It was first the street photographers Robert Doisneau and Vivian Maier, active in the 1950s, who influenced her photographic style by favoring the use of black and white and directing her attention to what was happening around her. . . She then seeks to capture moments in the lives of people who are often forgotten, sometimes drunk or curled up in a moment of distress. The pain and loneliness of these anonymous passers-by challenge her and immortalizing them on film allows her to make their suffering heard. She thus tries to make the viewer react, in order to take them out of their comfort zone: a provocation that does not aim to shock, but which invites reflection.

She also explores landscape photography. She then focuses on capturing unusual scenes where ambiguity gives way to doubt as to what is seen and to a polysemic poetry that sharpens curiosity and encourages contemplation. Carole Louvezy’s paintings take these two influences into account, but are also inspired by naïve, expressionist and urban art. With their raw side and bright colours, her canvases attract the eye. We will often see a brick wall covered in tags and graffiti that reminds her of her childhood in Lyon and the messages of revolt written with an aerosol on the masonry. Sometimes she adds an unusual element, like an eye, which surprises with its surrealist aspect in this context. By its presence, she forces the viewer to ask questions, to activate their imagination and to build their own story.