Eloise Capet – ‘Bridge of Light’ with Joanne Carter – Mobile Photographer Interview

©Eloise Capet

Contact Details

Website : www.eloisecapet.com

Instagram et EyeEm : @tsubame33_

Flickr : eloise.capet

Facebook : Eloïse Capet

Twitter : Eloise Capet @tsubame33_

‘My Melancholy’ – ©Eloise Capet

Capet discovered mobile photography in 2011 and it has, as she describes ‘radically changed her life’. She considers her mobile phone a pocket photo studio. Capet’s imagery has a strong narrative component, stylized compositions are conceived mentally long before she sets out to shoot. Her aim is to ‘tickle the minds of my viewers with whimsical faceless self-portraits and gracefully stage scenes’. Capet blends multiple layers of textures to produce melancholic and poetic moods, sometimes she mixes scratches to create more dramatic scenes. Her preference is to work in black and white and she enjoys manipulating the greyscale to reach her favorite blend.

‘Waiting in Vain’ – ©Eloise Capet

This year, 2014 has been a year of artistic recognition for Capet. In January she was awarded the Black & White category at the Mobile Photography Awards (MPA), see here. The same month, she was also graced with the title of Mobile Master at MacWorld in San Francisco – you can read more about that here. Her success continued by becoming one of the 26 finalists of the MPA/Shadow Stories Show hosted firstly in the Soho Arthouse Gallery in New York and in the Holcim Gallery in Toronto – currently. The iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS) also recently awarded her with four Honorable Mentions in the Landscape, Nature, People and Others categories.

‘The Dance of the White Dresses’ – ©Eloise Capet

‘The Fairy of Broceliande’ – ©Eloise Capet

‘Such a Small Hand’ – ©Eloise Capet

‘New York’ – ©Eloise Capet

Capet attended the MPA/Shadow Stories Digital Premier in the Soho Arthouse in New York this year; having already exhibited her art twice in Europe 2013, at the Berlin Fotofestival and a Parisian Gallery during the ‘Rencontres Photographiques du 10ème’, but this trip to New York excited her immensely.

She could not wait to talk with the American public and wanted to understand their perceptions and feelings relating to her images, she wanted to be there to answer all their questions. She had the most incredible time, her images were displayed on digital screens along with many of her favorite fellow mobile artists including David Booker, Helen Breznik, Roger Clay, Robin Robertis, Dilshad Corleone, Souichi Furusho, David Ingraham, Brett Chenoweth, Rob DePaolo, Scott Strazzante and more – Capet was in heaven, the realization that she, with these fellow artists, that she so admires, were in a gallery in New York City was almost overwhelming. Dan Berman who hosted this show did an outstanding job in many ways.

‘Opening Reception – Putnam – Paul Toussaint and Eloise Capet’ – ©Eloise Capet

Still bursting with energy Capet attended a second exhibition, in Putnam – Connecticut. Ann Monteiro and Paul Toussaint of The Empty Spaces Project decided to close The Mobile Masters Proof exhibition by hosting Capet’s work. In March, Capet along with 50 other winning photographers were Jury selected to receive the title of Mobile Master for their award winning portfolios of images. You can view all of this in this wonderful ebook edited by Dan Marcolina here. The gallery displayed all 50 prize winning Mobile Master images throughout May 2014, and added twenty original works of Capet’s throughout June 2014. The Opening Reception took place on Saturday May 31st in the evening, she would not have missed the party for anything!

Capet, Monteiro and Toussaint had a fabulous time, she received a very warm welcome as the ‘Special Guest’ and they even named a cocktail after her. The food was French and they rolled out the red carpet – the attention to detail was second to none and Capet will never forget the welcome, support and warm feelings she was left with.

‘Selfie Times Square’ – ©Eloise Capet

One reason Capet feels that her experience was such as success was because she feels her personality immediately fits with the American ‘can do’ spirit. She believes that if you have an idea or a Project in the US, people will always join with you and want to be your partner in business. In France, things take a lot more time, you need to justify your course and your networks. The adrenaline is still pumping through her veins from this trip and she has many exciting plans in the works.

Happily married to Alex for 10 years, she currently feels she is living a second honeymoon. She has been fascinated with NYC for a long time and enjoys this track by Jay Z.

« In New York,

Concrete jungle where dreams are made up,

There is nothing you can’t do cause you are in New York,

These streets will make you feel brand new,

Big lights will inspire you,

New York, New York, New York »

The energy and the buzz of NYC helped make Capet feel immediately at home. She loves Woody Allen movies, Berenice Abbott and of course Vivian Maier. As a close follower of Maier’s work, the streets seemed familiar to Capet. She loved her visit to MOMA and was enthralled to see William Eggleston’s work at the Whitney Museum (one of her favorite color street photographers) and she even squeezed in time to admire Edward Hopper’s paintings.

Capet is showing no signs of slowing down, she already has another project in the US and is currently displaying her work at the Stonecrop Gallery in Maine. This exhibition is called – Shoot & Tell: A Third Annual Exhibition of Cell Phone Photography and it’s open now until July 28, 2014. (You can find out more about this exhibition here).

Capet is also working on a book project with an editing house in collaboration with a French writer/journalist.

‘Where Are You?’ – ©Eloise Capet

In between this hectic schedule, Capet is working hard to communicate her Honorable Mentions from the IPPA and all other recent prizes to her contacts in France and promote existing contacts to make them known, she says, ‘It is an assignment I try to take on each time I have the opportunity to be a kind of ‘spokesperson’ for our artistic movement with the media in France. This is my personal contribution to promoting our great community and our fantastic emerging talents’.

Her main goal is to facilitate connections, to achieve a bridge between international qualitative curators and parisian cultural institutions. She is happy to modestly contribute that way to our emerging artistic movement.

‘Through The Screen’ – ©Eloise Capet

Capet is committed in France to help make recognize mobile photography as an alternative photography. She created the MobAG Paris – The Mobile Art Group of Paris (www.mobagparis.com) – in 2013 with Severine Bourlet who manages Tribegram, the French community of iphoneographers. MobAG Paris is the first French non profit organization whose mission statement is to promote mobile photography to new audiences, not only to users of digital photos online. Their goal is to raise the movement to an art form by itself by promoting the mobile upcoming talents to cultural institutions and medias in France. Their purpose is to change the perception of this new democratic and popular art form. They welcome all kind of initiatives and partnerships to succeed in their mission – public call outs and fundings.

Capet is a very driven and passionate personality, she explains how she sees mobile photography as, ‘distinctive but also, it is transforming our photographic habits, from plain social sharing to visual research. Each time this art form was challenged with the introduction of new technologies, it gained from its transformations. We are living a revolution and mobile photographers are writing a new chapter of the history of photography. I personally decided to adopt the cell phone as a legitimate tool for creation because it gives me the opportunity to always carry a photo studio in my pocket. By practicing multi-apping, my mobile device allows me to express my creativity and experiment it the best way’.

‘Selfie – Empire State Building NYC’ –

To sum up we’ll finish with a reference to Frank Sinatra and a quote from Capet, ‘I want to wake up in this city that never sleeps ». Again and again…’ and we’ll sure she will be fulfilling her dreams once more very soon.