Gisèle Vienne's '40 portraits' Explores Adolescent Effigies

Gisèle Vienne's book '40 portraits (2003-2008)', published by P.O.L, is a trilingual (English/French) object in three parts. It opens with Dennis Cooper's text 'teens2brelocated', a series of asyntactic adolescent voices in extreme situations. The core features forty color photographs of Vienne's dolls, mostly young girls with downcast eyes, hair strands, blouses, medals, red hoodies, and white stripes, occasionally a tie, a black eye, or a scar. These made-up or pale figurines stand naturally at the abyss of our era, exuding morgue, energy, and insolence—qualities of the choreographer of 'Kindertotenlieder' and 'Jerk'. The album concludes with Pierre Dourthe's 'Substitution', analyzing the photographic series of adolescent effigies, their repetition, and sculptural variations, addressing the artificiality of the body and the doll as a 'fictional construction'. The antipsychological beauty of these portraits evokes Robert Bresson's 'models' and his notion of reducing consciousness to a minimum. The review suggests Vienne may unknowingly reinvent Bresson's 'Four Nights of a Dreamer'.