The stories of the people behind the art: Solène Milcent #3

I have started to accept again this artistic part of my soul just two years ago. When I bought my first analog camera. And it was a start for big changes in my life. My photography helped me to visually express all my dreams, my frustrations… My real self started to reveal itself. It is now my own therapy.

I like to photograph friends, but also strangers that became my friends. I am a shy, introverted and not areally self confident person. But I really enjoy working with people. When I am with my camera in my hand, I feel different. I feel that it gave me a reason to be where I am. When you are photographing models, you need to be sure of what you want, you need to give directions. Ask people to stand as you want them to be. And because I am certain and confident about my role as a photographer, I don’t have any issues to direct the model. And it gave me confidence in my work but also in my daily life.

Now, I am still not sure how I am going to handle the need of creating and the need of paying my bills. For a few months now I  have been dedicating almost 100% of my time to creation and photography. I feel totally in the right place doing so. I feel free. It is all about photography: going out, I meet people and I ask them if they would like to be my model. Taking a walk in the city, I take notes of places I could do a photo-shoot later on. Going to the park, I write down my creative ideas. But I still have a lot of doubt. Is it the right thing to do, to be so free, and do what we love? Maybe we need some boundaries, some rules in order to be able to all live together. I don’t have the answer to this. But I know that at some point I need to make money again. I am still in the process of finding a balance between letting me be as I am, and fitting in the world as it is today…

From my own experience, I think that we all have our inner artist. We just need to accept it and let it out. I feel that art will make the difference in our lives. It is what is feeding our lives with sense. Yes, we are tons of human beings and tons of artists in this world. But we all have our own visions and life experience. If you ask 10 photographers to photograph the same model in the same place, you will have 10 very different pictures. Each artist is worth to exist, if he is true to himself.

Because I am from a marketing background I feel really sad when I see all those adds without any sense nor values. It saturates our brain with the wrong message. And we forget who we are because all those things are fast and easy satisfaction. Art is a satisfaction that can last, you can watch a movie over and over, listen to the same music endlessly, look at the same painting and it is still telling you something different every time you look at it. Once I dreamt of a world where instead of adds everywhere it would only be arts… The world needs more artists.