La vie is like that
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Dates2019 - 2024
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Author
- Topics Contemporary Issues, Daily Life, Fine Art, Photobooks, Social Issues
La vie is like that is a risograph photo & text book. The work is a meditation on migration, language, identity, memory, love, and grief. The work began as I was learning a language(s) whilst my father, diagnosed with dementia, began forgetting his own.
La vie is like that is a risograph photography book, combining image and text by Magali Duzant. The book was published by Seaton Street Press in 2024.
The book takes its inspiration from the philosophical thought experiment 'The Ship of Theseus,' which reflects on the concept of the persistence of identity - if every part of an object is replaced over time is it still the same object? La vie is like that is a meditation on migration, language, identity, memory, love and grief. The impetus for the work began as I was learning a language(s) whilst my father, recently diagnosed with dementia, began forgetting his own.
The book is structured as an alphabet primer (A is for Aphasia...B is for Blumen…E is for Emerson...Q is for Quizzical…Z is for Zeit) that blends languages - reflecting my father's combinations of French, Kreyol, and English, as well as my own study of German and Swiss German.
The decision to print the photographs in risograph was inspired by the shape and the role of memory - somewhat loose around the edges, producing ghost images, and not always stable. The images themselves are observational and atmospheric, often returning to the motifs of light, shadow, reflection, hands, and water.
The text blends research, observation, and humor. Starting from personal history they weave in a wide variety of subjects - Greek myths, the lives of writers, Japanese temple architecture, linguistic false friends, the history of reCAPTCHA and word puzzles, the etymology of the word dementia and the lack of a word to describe what one forgets, the opposite of a memory. La vie is like that builds a narrative around shifting identity and the ways in which love endures and reinvents itself, asking how the language we use shapes the people we become.
