My name is Angélique Baudonnet. I’m 15 and a pupil at Saint-Eugène. I love hanging out with my friends, horse-riding, and listening to music. I'm moody and sometimes boring, but I can be very funny when I want to be!
For this project I chose to use a large format photo of myself on which I superimposed a text that I wrote. The photo is positive; I seem to be happy, almost ecstatic. However, the text about me is very negative.
Here is the text in English:
“This girl expresses nothing. Or maybe just a little happiness emanates from her charming smile. You cannot guess the thoughts of a person just from their glance.
And look at her! Alone and lost in her youth, rejected by everything that surrounds her, she’s being a hypocrite. Her whimsical character, her way of believing that the World is beautiful and never admitting to herself that anything can be wrong, feeling bad at the slightest provocation, blaming the whole World although the World does nothing more than turn, and always thinking she’s lonely, though she is surrounded by friends and family.
She is still a naïve little girl, so naïve, who doesn’t want to be understood or to have people feel sorry for her. She needs support, someone to rely on, a presence. I hate her, I can’t bear her, I want to kill her, and she is in my worst nightmares. Nobody really knows her, but I know her by heart.
And I know that behind this façade, her big blue eyes feel a little too often alone. She still knows nothing of life, she must learn. Dream on little girl, because it is only in your dreams that your life will have concrete meaning!
Pay attention! Don’t you realise it’s for you that she reveals her unhappiness!”
I want to show myself as I see myself and not as people tend to see me. Everybody thinks that I'm nice, cute, but the truth is that I often hate myself. Through this work of art, I am trying to make you understand who I am.
I'm not as you think I am. I do not like myself, I am no one special and I dislike myself for no particular reason; “We love without reason, and without reason one hates” said Jean-François Regnard, the eighteenth century French writer and playwright.
The photo, then, shows how people see me and the text lets you know how I see myself.
This is not an original idea; many others have addressed the issue of self-perception and being misunderstood in their work:
Plus fort que la haine by Tim Guenard is the story of a child who suffers until, one day, he finds hope. I would like to find this hope which would allow me to fight against all the trials of life.
Cf.: http://www.fraternet.com/magazine/loi1702.htm
Où es-tu? By Marc Levy is the story of a couple who are in love but who do not want to admit it.
Like them, I find it difficult to express how I feel about someone, or even to admit my mistakes.
Cf.: http://www.evene.fr/livres/livre/marc-levy-ou-es-tu--7985.php
Angie by the Rolling Stones is a bitter-sweet song which echoes my feelings about this world.
Cf.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXRExocnpUw
I have chosen a portrait from the MAAA collection which comments my own portrait: it is a melancholic black and white photo by Vasco ASCOLINI entitled Firenze from 1987. We see the silhouette of a woman, sitting. There is a symbolic contrast between the light and the darkness, between presence and absence (she is there but we do not recognize her). We do not know who she is, what she is, what she is doing there, why she should interest someone else (i.e. the photographer)… questions I often ask of myself.
In my photo there is also a contrast too, between the radiant girl with the Mona Lisa smile in the picture and the tirade against her.
Both photos are about being and seeming to be…
Cf.: http://www.devoir-de-philosophie.com/dissertation-faut-opposer-etre-paraitre-2180.html
Cf.: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_Ascolini