Text: Federica Belli

Images: Nicolas St-Pierre

What makes a photographer stand apart in a world where all the people take photographs daily? What gives her permission to show her work with a different authority? Are humans really split between artists and non-artists? How about the studies: does one need a MFA to be an artist? Is it enough to have a MFA to be an artist? So many questions, so little sense in asking them. In a way, all these apparently relevant questions lose meaning in a world as fast-spinning and ever evolving as ours.

Just like a professional football player and that friend of yours who plays football, an artist photographer is not any different from anyone else taking photographs daily. What really makes a difference lies in the details. The constant mental dedication, the obsession, the continuous experimentation with the visual language, and the consequent apparently effortless use she makes of it. The questions posed repeatedly and insistently to herself and to the ones around her. But most of all, the courage and the discipline to explore our reality not only when she feels like it, but rather daily and in-depth.

And that is merely the surface of the issue. What makes a photographer an interpreter of her times? What is the difference between a skilful photographer and an artist who speaks through photographs? The answers are incredibly varied, yet artists usually share a common trait: the courage to stand at the borders of society – or maybe it is rather an inability to merge with the people around them? – and observe it with enough detachment to realize how many aspects of it are twisted in some way. The most difficult part lies precisely there, in consistently choosing not to conform and to consciously maintain that weird uniqueness which makes it possible to delve in many more social spheres than usual, and yet to never become part of any of them.

The next step, masterfully communicating these discrepancies in society, is so subjective and naturally found that there is no point in discussing where it comes from. Just like poetry, effective visual storytelling comes from a cocktail of experimentation and instinctual combinations, from intuitions and fro one’s cultural background. There is no right nor wrong, it’s just… either working or not. And what does it even mean to work for a photograph? What does it even mean to work for a visual series? Simply enough, it conveys a message that the observer somehow already feels inside, yet has no idea how to communicate.

But in the end, what makes a photographer is an immense and absurd love for a world she knows she will never fully be part of. What makes a photographer is exactly what makes a human human: curiosity and the courage to live.

To check out more work by Nicolas St-Pierre, you can check out his website.

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