Ce premier vers de La Légende de la nonne, que Victor Hugo composa en 1828 et que Georges Brassens enregistra en 1956, est une injonction à laquelle pourraient souscrire bien des photographes qui, à leur manière, l’adressent également à tous ceux qui regardent leurs images, et plus généralement à tous ceux qui sont convaincus qu’il est indispensable de voir. Ce pourrait donc être une forme de guide pour Clémentine Schneidermann qui, après douze autres photographes, s’est immergée dans la région de Sète, est allée à la rencontre de personnes et de personnages, d’espaces et de lumières. De chats aussi.

Elle l’a fait avec dans son œil une étincelle qui, comme à son habitude, sait éviter les caté- gories, pratiquer une forme douce et curieuse de documentaire qui frise avec la mise en scène de mode, mais également la sociologie, voire l’ethnologie, et qui opère une tension qui nous convainc que le réel – ou ce que nous considérons comme tel – est une inépuisable réserve de fictions.

Clémentine Schneidermann a donc parcouru Sète et les communes voisines par temps de soleil, mais n’a pas insisté sur la chaleur. Elle a préféré rester en demi-teinte, à tous points de vue, ce qui lui permet d’offrir une souplesse de vision confortable. Elle ne décrit pas mais nous entraîne dans des espaces ocres dont les angles jamais trop brutaux attendent calmement des passants ou accueillent, parce qu’ils se font décor, des personnages. De vrais personnages, souvent seuls, qui posent volontiers –voire s’exhibent – ou semblent poser tant ils ou elles sont figés. On ne peut s’empêcher de penser que certaines auraient bien aimé être la Püppchen de Georges Brassens, muse jamais épousée et profondément aimée avec laquelle il forma un couple de liberté. On peut aussi imaginer que certains des messieurs auraient bien aimé faire partie des copains d’abord et n’auraient pas renâclé à entonner une complainte pour être enterrés en plage de Sète, avec tous les avantages qui s'y rattachent. On pense cela parce que, sans que le propos soit de composer un portrait de Sète au travers de Brassens, les échos de celui qui repose au cimetière Le Py servent cependant de fil rouge à la photo- graphe en balade, avec tendresse et avec, également, un sourire.

En fait, un peu comme Brassens, la photographe se livre, en apparence tout du moins, non au développement d’un projet mais à une forme de cueillette modeste et d’aspect léger. Lui le faisait avec des mots et des mélodies qui restent en tête, elle le fait avec des images sans maniérisme et pourtant solides, qui s’installent doucement au fond de la rétine. Des images qui, comme les couplets du poète, content ou évoquent aussi des histoires. Celles de la belle qui se rêve en star, celle du passionné qui se projette dans sa collection d’objets, de livres, d’affiches, de cartes postales, de signes de papier et s’y invente une identité. Pas très différent, au fond, de tous ceux qui prennent grand soin de leur moustache, convaincus même si le miroir devait les détromper qu’ils sont des sosies du chanteur résolument anar. Clémentine Schneidermann en a croisé, en a déniché et leur a tiré le portrait avec tendresse, respectant leur conviction autant que leur illusion. Il faut dire qu’ils sont sympathiques, souvent émouvants et si tous ne se présentent pas avec une pipe, ils sont fréquemment accompagnés de chats. Ces animaux que Brassens disait « aimer parce qu’il n’y a pas de chats policiers » et qu’il a chantés si souvent – dans Brave Margot comme dans Putain de toi, Le Testament, Don Juan, Jeanne...– et qu’il met en valeur dans son roman loufoque, La Tour des miracles, dont les habitants ont de vrais chats dans la gorge.

Tout cela nous offre un Sète bon enfant, avec quelques perspectives de mer calme, de teintes apaisées, de douceur de l’ambiance soutenue par celle d’une palette à peine vibrante. Mais, derrière ce calme, il y a des moments de mystère, presque inquiétants, des personnages impossibles à définir qui semblent sortir d’une histoire reléguée en promenant leur chien ou qui restent figés au centre de l’image, appréciant l’équilibre du carré et semblant l’éprouver tout en restant une énigme. Puis, dans cette sensation d’un univers étale, apparaissent des stridences de rouge, comme de petits sifflements atti- rant l’œil, qui peuvent s’élargir, devenir vêtement de tous les jours ou de gala, voire, en aplat, décor et sujet principal d’une photo. Il est alors temps de retourner à La Légende de la nonne et à son refrain :

Enfants, voici des bœufs qui passent Cachez vos rouges tabliers.

Documentary, performance, social commentary, landscape photography and, of course, fashion. This series explores all of these forms but belongs to none.
In the photographs exhibited, we see young people move in harmony with the seasons, adapting, embracing and thriving in them. The scenes they are pictured against, in contrast, are stagnant, tired and worn. The passage of time is central. Seasonal changes and celebrations are reflected in the colours of costumes but also in the landscapes. On one wall, you see the images taken in Spring and Summer, and on the other, they are from Autumn and Winter.

The show’s central image, the summer street party, encapsulates the spirit of this series - the carnivalesque summer street party contrasted with a deserted Merthyr Vale street. Clémentine and Charlotte met in Valleys town, Abertillery in 2015. Realising their common interest, they began hosting fashion-themed workshops for young people in two youth groups. They’ve collaborated and worked with the same young people for the past three years. Drawing on their own industry experience, they have taught the young people skills such as sewing, customising clothes and styling.

They helped put together the outfits in the photographs, which were taken by Clémentine. But the workshops were about more than that. They were about introducing the next generation to the creative industries, developing their self-confidence and challenging stereotypes. Deprivation in the south Wales Valleys has been documented for decades. The media has reliably presented the nation with caricatures of unemployment, declining town centres and, more recently, sound bites for unsympathetic reports on Brexit-voting regions. The coverage has rarely sought to explore the complexities of de-industrialisation and what this means for people, families and communities.

Clémentine and Charlotte’s business here is not to deny the reality of social deprivation. Instead, they juxtapose this with the vivacity, promise and hope of youth. They elevate the young subjects with a colourful palette and by playing with fiction and humour - the resulting contract positing a challenge to preconceived ideas about the Valleys.

The images were taken between 2015 and 2018 in Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil.

Memphis, 16th August 2016: I’m standing in the rain on Elvis Presley Boulevard with two cameras around my neck and one in my pocket. The sounds of Graceland Radio are coming from the speakers outside: “Welcome to the Candle-light Vigil, the night of the year.” Thousands of people surround me,they stretch out in one long line, the length of the Boulevard. Elvis Presley died on this day, thirty-nine years ago. And for thirty-nine years fans from all over the world have been gathering here, on the Boulevard, holding a candle. It’s a very symbolic event, with significant media coverage. But it’s raining this year. It’s raining so much that I have to put my three cameras away. The candles blow out, one after the other.

So for a few dollars, I buy some plastic ponchos at the Souvenir Shop for my fellow travellers: Johnny B. Goode, his mother Alison and grandmother Margaret. They don’t seem to be bothered by the rain, it probably makes little difference when you come from the UK. It has been two years since I first photographed Johnny. It was during the Porthcawl Elvis festival in Wales. He had just turned eight and had performed at the Cabin Bar. The next year, in 2015, I meet him at the same spot. His mother is prepping him for the concert. She tells me about their plan to go to Memphis next summer to participate in competitions for child performers. I ask if I can join their journey. She says yes.

It’s still pouring with rain. I decide to move somewhere dry, and wave goodbye to my British friends. Bitterly I regret all the photos that I’d liked to have taken tonight: Johnny
in his white suit holding his mother’s hand who wears a matching white dress; those tears that Margaret sheds when she listens to her late husband’s favourite Elvis song; the shrines that people have built all along the Boulevard; that boy in the beautiful pink suit who came all the way from Alabama; Elvis’s grave covered with flowers; the celebrants that will still be holding their candles as the sun starts to rise.

But never mind the candles. Never mind the sunrise and the flowery grave. Everything that I have photographed during the past four years is also proof of their fervour, fervour that I have witnessed in the most intimate of places: on the surface of Steve’s bedroom wall; Brian’s skin; Robbie’s smile. Or on a Friday night in a South Wales pub, where their dreams and reality meet.

I am often asked why people like Elvis so much. I’ve been forever looking for an answer. Maybe in truth there is no one particular reason. In a way, it seems that somehow their identities have merged with Elvis. His music has become the soundtrack of their lives, for better or for worse.

The weather might be cold and the environment harsh and bleak, but not those pictured.Clémentine Schneidermann’s photographs are both lyrical and affirmative, playing against and unravelling the strictures of the documentary tradition. The pictures have been made as a result of a residency for an arts and environment regeneration programme in Blaenau Gwent, Wales.
Clémentine worked with Charlotte James, native of Merthyr, in making her portraits of young girls in the valleys. The children are all dressed up.

Clémentine has already explored fantasies and imaginings in her earlier portraits of fans of Elvis Presley: a figure of identification that allowed a moment of escape from a distinctly un-ideal ordinary and everyday. The dialectic continues in these new portraits, only she is now involved in setting up the fantasy. For all the possibilities, the as-yet unfulfilled dreams, we might associate with childhood, there is an unease and disquiet about these pictures— the darkness of documentary’s realism still cuts against the glamour. In one picture, Paige and Lydia, Coed Cae, the girls wear clothes that are too big. It is or has been raining, the valley behind is grey with mist. The girl in pink looks back directly to camera, while her friend, all in blue, hides her face behind a large hat and looks away, hand towards mouth she appears nervous and uncertain.

The blunt look of the girl in pink destroys the charade, the cosiness of this little theatre. Poses often appear strained or come undone in these pictures. The portraits are neither pretty nor sentimental. One is conscious of the weather, a palpable force that breaks up the formality of the poses as faces are crunched up against the wind or hair is blown all over the face. A golden flailing headscarf breaks the pictorial order as one girl is lined up against a pebble-dash home in a leopardskin outfit. In a number of pictures, the girls’ patterned clothing is played off against the textured walls, a knowing and deliberate formal aesthetic that jars with the context.

Styling and dressing up her young subjects allows a point of connection with these children and the creation of small moments of carnival to be set against the undisguised social reality of deprivation and economic neglect — the barriers these people face and will continue to face. The colourful embellishment in the pictures might only be skin deep, mere surface decoration and offer only momentary comfort and release. But it also allows for these young people to play against and resist the stability of type and of being fixed within categories.