Marylise Vigneau

Central Havana 2015

Marylise Vigneau (b.1968, France) developed an early taste for peeping through keyholes and climbing walls. She studied Literature at la Sorbonne and her thesis was about cities as characters in Russian and Central-European novels. During the past eight years Marylise has been mainly documenting life in Asia focusing on cities and on what time and development or isolation do to them. Her work has been shown in the Angkor Photo Festival, Foto Istanbul, Yangon Photo Festival, Nairang Gallery in Lahore and Focus Photography Festival in Mumbai. Her photographs have been published in Pix Quarterly (India), Asia Life and Milk (Cambodia).

About the Photograph:

“I stumbled across this scene and was seduced by the pattern made of thorns and tenderness, tentacles that surrounded the young couple, capturing the girl’s body in a double embrace. It’s part of my project About Time  where I intend to visit Havana once a year during the coming decade. In this city, time is an unavoidable character. Destructive or facetious, sardonic or nostalgic, political or imaginary, irreverent in any case, time sprawls its texture and shadow all over the city. Half a century of defiant isolation, embargo and excruciating austerity has done its work. The revolution seems to have been confiscated, the superb and sensuous fabric of the city has crumbled beyond repair. People have gone into exile building a very vivid absence, heroes have aged, swimming-pools have been left empty and disbelief and reluctance towards propaganda is everywhere. Time has collapsed here but time is on the verge of unwrapping. On Havana’s streets, there is a charge of anticipation, and one senses a people yearning to embrace the world.”