Benzine Cyprine

« I want that my difference matters, that it produces something symbolic », Liana Borghi, 1989.

Benzine Cyprine is the name of a women’s group, and also an identifying symbol. The creation of this project results from my compelling need to respond to an existential angst around being female. This gender that is felt to be vulnerable, helpless and denigrated.

Despite this, one can find their own way of embodying their gender beyond the injunctions related to their sex. But nowadays, this approach is neither spontaneous nor innate. It is built.

I then began to photograph symbols of a particular feminine identity that inspires both sensuality and virility. This symbolism is expressed through moments of life of a gang of women. Because the identity group, in my opinion, offers valorization, respect, cohesion and strength of claim in total contrast to the feeling of vulnerability. The Benzine Cyprine group represents this desire for access to enjoyment and happiness by exploding its internalized individuality in the face of the world.

The way I represent Benzine Cyprine and illustrate this concept of female gang is to make believe in their existence. The principle is to arouse enthusiasm and pride against the state of mind they represent. I deliberately mimic the fake documentary by valuing this feminine identity using the same processes borrowed from advertising (attractive aesthetic, graphic charter, slogan, projection into reality…). It's an ironic attitude on my part that follows the rules of a world where emotion draw more attention than intellectualization, where entertainment gets more fascination than the development of a thought.

Yet fiction also has its active role in the way we imagine our future and question reality.

P.S : This twenty pictures is a selection among seventy photographs of this women's instants of life.