MARIE-LOU CHATEL
BIOGRAPHY
Belgian artist Marie-Lou Chatel has specialised in the restoration and colourisation of old photographs. Since her teenage years, she has been interested in the work of the major photographers of the twentieth century, such as Dorothea Lange, William Gedney, and Jack Delano. She studied art history in Namur then photography in Charleroi and discovered, during her university research, the digital portal of the American Library of Congress Farm Security Administration / Office of War, whose particularity is that of enabling visitors to download black-and-white images in high resolution. This resource constitutes an important pictorial narrative of American life between 1935 and 1944. Playfully and out of curiosity, Marie-Lou Chatel started to colourise one, then two, then three photographs. The result was a revelation for the artist, whose approach aims not to reduce the power or value of black and white but to present scenes in a new light. Her meticulous yet highly poetic technical work, oscillating between invention and restitution, enables the spectator to forge an idea of life during this period.
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