Courtesy Valérie Germain
Lila KIRCH
Photography
Lila Kirch is currently studying drawing at La Cambre, in her third
year. She has always loved visual arts and photography, which she also continues to explore after a year in photo prep at the Atelier de Sèvres in Paris. Her photography internship at La Cambre opened the way to documentary photography, and allowed her to mix her practice of drawing and photography in the representation of women. She is currently
exhibiting her serie Women in nursing homes at the Geopolis center in Brussels.
Women in nursing homes
The photographs in this series were taken in various retirement homes in Brussels during winter 2023 and spring 2024.
Through the treatment of her subject, Lila Kirch, confronts the otherness of old age and reveals the apprehension that this process arouses in her.
Sharp contrasts, sharp shadows give these bodies and faces the appearance of characters from fantastic tales.
The contrasts are not only present in the material treatment of the image, the literal relationship of the body that lived with that of archetypes of beauty frozen in eternal youth shows with irony that nothing lasts. Neither for them, nor for the artist who will one day join them in this state.
For a young woman like Lila Kirch, beyond fear, there is intimidation. These women who live in isolation, outside the active society, seem impenetrable and therefore even more «other». They wear their old clothes like masks beyond which it is difficult to access. Thus, the shots tend to show them absorbed in themselves or plunged into a certain torpor.
More than objective portraits of these women, it is also the projection of her anguish that the artist shows here.