"The Line": Girls in their mothers' wedding dresses

EVERY DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD looking for new ways to tell stories or to capture what we previously did not notice. We choose interesting photo projects and ask their authors what they wanted to say. This week we are publishing the project "The Line" by Celine Boden, for whom she shot several girls in their mothers' wedding dresses.

I started taking pictures in college, mostly friends, and more staged shots than documentaries. I studied literature, and later architecture, but all this time I had a feeling that the only thing I really want to do is photography. And when I went to the Gobelins visual communication school in Paris, it became obvious to me that this would be a matter of my life. I already received a master at the London College of Communication at the University of the Arts. In fact, photography has always been more than a hobby for me; Seeing how my completed projects become public knowledge, I immediately proceeded to work on new ones, but I never felt one hundred percent satisfied with the result. I am driven by the need to create new images, the hope that I can bring something new and new to the world of photography, if that is possible. First of all, I am interested in portraiture as a refraction of the theme of human identity and gender, since this correlates with my personal experience. But besides that, I really love the scenery. Photography truly fascinates me in all its forms, because, regardless of methods, it manages to show both our tendency to mystify reality and frustration because reality is both tangible and elusive. For me, photography is a constant exploration of visual boundaries and possibilities; it questions the depth of our perception of the world.

The original idea of this project was not limited to portraits. This is more about the process, about the relationship that I had to establish in the form of a portrait. I was interested in projections characteristic of the relations of daughters and mothers: how each inevitably imagines and portrays the other. In western culture, it is common for girls to imagine a bride as a reference role model. The identity of the bride is not so important; it is a vaguely vague image, unlike a dress that carries the whole idea. Dress is a symbol. The peculiar return of the dress to life provides an opportunity to take a fresh look at how we perceive the images and how the daughters treat them.

In a way, I submit my models to an experiment, the purpose of which is to capture their reaction, expressed with the help of poses and gestures. The project "The Line" is to the same extent an intrusion into the private history of each girl, her personal space, as well as a study of the relationship between daughters and mothers. Each of the participants in the project had to ask the mother for a precious dress for shooting, sometimes at the cost of long persuasion, thus recognizing and securing the sentimental value of this object.

I must say that the concept of the project has not changed much in the process of work. The stories about the dresses that I learned confirmed their symbolic value for the relations of the parents - regardless of whether they were kept with special care and intact, or, conversely, violently destroyed. The idea of symbolic attire seems hackneyed, and with the help of this project I wanted to figure out whether this sentimentality is genuine and tenacious or contrived, inspired by nostalgia for the past. It turned out that it is even more powerful than I originally intended.

I tried so that the portraits of the girls looked natural, did not use the poses and facial expressions typical of wedding shots, and thus did not merge with each other. Therefore, we also refused wedding arrangements and shoes. It was also important for me to emphasize that the dresses are not theirs, they are only lent and do not sit perfectly on the figure. In itself, the dress is unnatural, not everyday, is a kind of disguise, personifying the supposedly "perfect" femininity. Taking off without make-up and other personal items, the girls acquired their “daughter” qualities to the fullest: the dresses seemed to bring their mothers into the picture, watching them, which in turn affects the heroines, they feel more confident, attentive and tender.

Most of the time, the weddings of our mothers are not perceived by us as part of our personal history, although we take it for granted and do not separate the history of the parents from their own. These images strongly influence daughters, even if unconsciously - we partially identify ourselves through these images. The participants of the project challenge the time and the difference of generations, they recreate the past, which they invented themselves, allowing themselves to play an archetypal role. Facial expressions, old-fashioned dresses, their faulty fit on the figure - all this becomes a tool for our interpretation. Nowadays, marriage does not involve the same social pressure that previous generations faced. Now we have a choice, an opportunity that defines our personality and principles. The meaning of marriage has changed, but the image of the girl to the marriage did not evolve too much: for example, the cult of purity in some way still plays a significant role in the construct of femininity. The concept of the "bride" is still burdened with this, even if allegorically.