Le bruit que nous faisons assis là, sans qu'aucun de nous ne bouge

This project deals with hearing loss and evokes the specific disabilities and abilities of the human community that experiences it. The images travel between representations of memories and depictions of silence, but also of noise.

On my bedside table, there's a small rectangular box containing two insignificant little pieces of plastic with a spike mechanism. I received my first hearing aids at the age of 6. I've since memorized the act of placing them in my ears and got used to the background noise that appears once I've switched them on.

The first time I turned them on, there was a constant sound of boiling water. My mother and father were worried before they realized that I'd never heard the sound of rain on the skylight.

Over the years, I've never really been affected by this handicap, nor have I ever considered it as such. When I asked myself about my use of photography as a means of expression, I quickly made the connection with my hearing impairment. I've always been a keen observer of everything around me. In my family albums, you can see that even as a child, my eyes are wide open, as if I'm trying to capture something I'm missing. 

Without my hearing aids, I can only hear 50% of sounds. And with them? I can't say that everything is normal. In fact, I don't know what I can't hear or how I'm supposed to hear at 100%.

Over the last two years, I've been using the photographic medium in different ways to tell a story. It zigzags between memories, discoveries, experiences, conversations, reflections and observations. When I photograph, my feelings take over, allowing me to create a new visual language. I mix various genres such as documentary, staging, portrait, landscape and still life to describe all the facets of these sensory perceptions.

I went in search of meaning. What are the specific abilities and disabilities of the hearing impaired? How do you depict silence and noise? These are very abstract notions, silence in particular. We can imagine it or write it in music, like John Cage in his piece 4'33'', but the ambient noises of the world are always present. Being deaf or hard of hearing doesn't mean you can't hear anything. We grasp the tiniest vibrations that we feel through our bodies and which translate the rustling of the World.

During the making of this project, I have become quite obsessed with the physical form of the ear and photographed multiple objects resembling an ear. I used blur to transcribe an auditory perception into a visual one and to represent my perception of the world growing up before having any hearing aids. The thermal camera images are evolving as the project goes on to form a clear silhouette which illustrate the way it can sometimes be hard to decipher what is heard. Some of the more abstract photos are here to try and capture noise in a visual way. While looking at the project, the beginning is enigmatic and the more it goes on, the more we can understand what the subject is. Its aim is to make the viewers aware of their senses and to disturb them just the amount.