Original SX70 Polaroids
Until 2008 Corinne Mercadier’s photography practice was rather unorthodox. She would first shoot an image with her Leica M6, then re-photograph the resulting print ( black and white in this series ) in her studio with a Polaroid SX70. The double shoot allowed her to rework the light and shadows of the image and alter the composition.These photographs open on to a space whose strangeness is accentuated by the texture and particularities of the Polaroid SX70. The double shoot makes it possible to obtain several versions of the first image, all of them unique.
The series entitled Just This Once marked the beginning of a new chapter of staged photographs, a practice that Corinne Mercadier continues to pursue today, using digital cameras and tools. In 2000 she began to produce lightweight sculptures fashioned of fabric, fiber glass and carbon fiber. She photographed them as they were tossed into the air, capturing their forms in flight: geometrical volumes, articles of clothing – a hexagonal cone section with sleeves, for instance, fashioned from organza.
The sculptures, thrown aloft by the artist’s assistant, sometimes encountered other characters. The ephemeral nature of the tossed objects, captured in photographic images, inspired the name of the series: Just This Once, a phrase borrowed from Rilke’s Ninth Elegy.