Poetry of the Living World with Pauline Rühl Saur and the Diana F+

French photographer Pauline Rühl Saur was thrilled the day she received a Diana F+ as a gift. Since then, our lightweight and compact 120 film camera has accompanied her everywhere. She uses it for her personal projects as well as for her commissioned works. As the artist has a real interest in the pictorial and the matter in her creations, she likes to exploit the possibilities of experimentation offered by the Diana F+ and in particular double exposure. Discover how Pauline Rühl Saur takes advantage of the full potential of the Diana F+ to produce creative and poetic analogue images.

Photos taken by Pauline Rühl Saur with the Diana F+ camera.

Hello Pauline, could you introduce yourself to our readers?

I am the daughter of a bookbinder and a photographer. I'm from a family of four children, we had a lively childhood bathed in beautiful things, surrounded by nature, pickings, sensitivity to craftsmanship, and artists in all kinds. We closely followed the work of our mother, Françoise Saur, the first woman in history to have won the Prix Nièpce (Prize awarded by the Gens d’images association). Images were very important in our daily life and we paid a close attention to lights and colours.

After two years of studying art history, I felt the need to do rather than analysing. I entered the National School of Photography in Arles, South of France. Since then I've been taking pictures almost every day. Either from my daily life, or on personal themes, or for commissioned works. Photography is truly a way of being in the world. My practice is very broad and open. I am curious and I like to discover new things. I do not like routine but diversity and new horizons. Sometimes something from my personal work gives me ideas for commissioned works and vice versa. These different parts feed off each other.

My favourite themes are humans and the sensuality of things, objects, textures. I am interested in everyday life, work, life wounds, portraits, fashion, dance... I am looking for the state of grace, the suspended, magical moments, the ones that transcends reality. I want to capture the poetry of the living world. The dazzling.

However, I am not a monomaniac of photography, and all artistic expressions have a soft spot in my heart. Music, dance, painting, drawing affect me infinitely. I have a very pictorial photographic approach, I consider some of my images successful when you no longer know if you are looking at a photo or a pastel. I feel completely in connection with the work of Sarah Moon, Paolo Roversi, of the painter Richter for his research between photography and painting, but I also love the portraits of August Sanders, Richard Avedon, and yes of course and sincerely my mother Françoise Saur, or visions full of humor like Olivier Culmann's.

Photos taken by Pauline Rühl Saur with the Diana F+ camera.

Why do you take analogue photos?

When I was a baby, my mother would sometimes take me to her lab while she was doing prints. Since then, I love the smell of developing and printing products. This is certainly why I have a visceral link to film photography. Moreover, born in 1976, I come from a generation that grew up with analogue photography. When I left school in 2001, digital was just around the corner, along with the internet. The wave of digital technology finally broke and I had to get on it because customers no longer wanted to pay for films or developments. My personal works are almost all done in film. I have never loved digital tools. They are very practical, it's true but too cold, they make you too dependent on technology that is constantly outdated or subject to planned obsolescence. Not to mention the fragility of storage. I'm not very comfortable with this technology. Beyond these material aspects, I love matter infinitely; the silver grains on the negative and the sheet are inimitably sensual. The gestures and time involved in film photography are also much more in tune with my inner being.

I have hundreds of negatives and contact sheets, stacks of hard drives. My binders of negatives and my photo boxes are calm, at rest. On the contrary, the frenzy of technological developments and the fragility of digital equipment put us in permanent instability and fragility. It's completely stressful. And then the hours of post-production behind a computer are very tiring, they take away a lot of energy and make it difficult to reconnect with the material. Photography has always been linked to developments in technology and the industry of the moment, it is interesting to think about this. In summary, I work in analogue both for aesthetic reasons and for work gesture reasons.

Photos taken by Pauline Rühl Saur with the Diana F+ camera.

What do you like about the Diana F+? How did you integrate this camera into your practice?

The Diana F+ is a beautiful encounter. I was quite fed up with my hard drives always full and of their fragility... all these files that can disappear in an electric sigh. I already had two medium format film cameras, a Rolleiflex from the 60's which belonged to my grandfather, and a very heavy Mamiya. They are wonderful machines.

I had my eyes on the Diana for while and someone gifted me the camera. I was immensely delighted to hold it in my hands, so light, such a toy, so casual! In use, it gave me the informality I was longing for, something like "it doesn't matter". It also relaxes my models, the cameras adds some fun to the process of shooting and I love it. The Diana is an inexpensive camera that produces marvels! It brings surprise and astonishment into the game. Brilliant! I still had to use several films to tame it but now I always bring it on my shoots, and when possible I take some pictures with it. It's great for lots of themes, portraits, fashion, landscapes. With this device I worked on the society of overconsumption and overproduction for my series "SATURATIONS". The Diana was the ideal device to shape my ideas. I wanted to express the “too much” and the saturation of the “too much”. This is where I started doing multiple exposures, between 3 and 6 overlays. Stacking the images, like all the information with which our brains are bombarded. I love this technique because with it I catch ghosts and spirits, I can realize the impermanence of things. And that is wonderful.

"Saturations" series by Pauline Rühl Saur with the Diana F+.

Do you have any advice for making multiple exposures?

Difficult to give advices. I proceed by thinking about what I am going to superimpose and why. I find it interesting to do so, to turn the device in several directions. I noticed that beyond three exposures it is difficult not to overexpose the film, and then the image becomes really confused.

What part do you leave to experimentation in your photographic practice?

A big part! As I said before, I like diversity, so I am delighted to use new tools and explore new practices. Lately, I have also started pinhole and cyanotype. These different techniques allow us to transport ourselves to other worlds and open up to other visions.

Photos taken by Pauline Rühl Saur with the Diana F+ camera.

Any upcoming projects you would like to tell us about?

I am working on a feminist project, “Suffering to be beautiful?". In summary, it questions the link that we women have today with the injunction "To suffer to be beautiful". And this through our relationship with our wardrobe. To what extent do we accept the constraints and pain caused by our clothes? Why? I intend to continue shooting in different geographical locations to bring a broad reflection. I wish one day I could write a book. Another current project is "the spirit of places" that I do in collaboration with my companion, Benjamin Bachelier, painter. We make masks, very simple and raw, and we choose places that seem deserted by humanity. It is a work between photography and painting.
Still in progress, a work on the scars that life leaves on the body. This is at the very beginning.

Photos taken by Pauline Rühl Saur with the Diana F+ camera.

You can follow Pauline on Instagram, her website and her LomoHome.

The Diana F+ is available on our Online Shop.

2022-03-20 #gear #people #medium-format #120 #multiple-exposures #diana #diana-f

Mentioned Product

Lomography Diana F+

Lomography Diana F+

Take timeless and dramatic photos on 120 film with the Diana F+. Create stunning soft-focused images and customize it with sweet lenses or even an instant back for additional effects and flexibility.

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