Charlotte El Moussaed

Today the "Samaritaine neighbourhood" is made up both of people and also memories. To be more precise, the people here work in nearby department stores, and the photographer knows them well enough to be part of their "family" from time to time. They have their name tags, and could even be La Samaritaine staff if the store were still open.  Charlotte El Moussaed chooses a combination of portraiture and collage to evoke this commercial identity, juxtaposing tightly framed subjects to focus on their attitude and their clothes, with extracts from La Samaritaine’s old commercial catalogues.  These "visual snippets” depicting physical components conjure up "moments in time” that in fact are quite modern.