STACCATO : livre photographique de Maëva Benaiche

Why this photographic project? I have been working on this project to find my voice and make it heard. My voice and that of 1% of the population, who, like me, stutter. In February 2019 someone said to me a gratuitous and inappropriate remark during a photographic shoot: "before asking for a photo, you must learn how to speak". At that moment, I didn't know what to reply. However, today my answer to that comment, and so many others before and after that one, takes its shape into that photographic project that is now being published in a book. I would like us to stop hurting others for free, I would like us to try and understand what is different from ourselves. I would like the book to make everyone aware of such invisible handicap because there is a proper lack of truthful representations of stutterers and stammerers in the world. Nowadays most societies rely on speed, efficiency, profitability and therefore fluidity. Especially the fluency of speech. Therefore, people who do not fit into the scheme are excluded. No one takes the time to listen to them. No one ever has time for anything anymore. With this book combining writings that retrace my thoughts over several years and photographs that reflect my vision of the world, my experience, what I feel through this language disorder and my communication with others, I am offering you the chance to take the time. Take the time to discover something new. Someone different. Take the time to ask yourself, reflect, put into perspective what you know, what you think you know and what you may actually ignore. Take the time to open a book, feel it page after page, immerse yourself in the subject, let yourself be carried away. Now, if I could respond to that previous remark, I would say the following: "before speaking, you must take the time to think", and what better than a book to take this time? Genesis of the photographic project The project has took seed in me since I entered the ETPA (School of Photography in Toulouse). From the first year, I decided to put my feelings into images, to question my oral difference through a photographic series entitled "from in to out". This series was the start of a real process of acceptance. It started during the lockdown in March 2020. While going through several notes and writings made for several previous years, I began a long introspection: I tried to understand where I was in relation to my stuttering and I tried to put it into image, to make it perceptible for the fluent people. For all of you. This is the birth of "VID(E) INTERIEUR(E)" (interior life) project. I showed a first draft to my end-of-second-year jury. First draft which was well received and which encouraged me to go further. During the third and final year at my school, I opened another chapter: a photographic series entitled "Magma". With this ongoing work, I have evolved towards the acceptance of my difference, I have called for more understanding, from myself, from others, I have questioned everything that is not frozen in time such as identities, characters, judgments... Why a photographic book: STACCATO? Photography enables me to free myself from doubts. I take my time. I free myself from any rhythm, so I can follow my own. Photography enables me to give substance to the implosion that inhabits me, to these thoughts that run faster than my words. I do not seek to represent reality, but to question it. That is why I transform it, turn it into a negative, blur it, give movement to it, make it vibrate until it becomes abstract. An abstraction with organic, elementary lines. Photography enables me to align the person I am and what I do, so that I can present myself to the world in a whole. Making this photographic magma evolve into a book allows me to define the meaning that I would like to convey through my flood of images. Give them a fluidity, the one, broken and liberated that I would like to offer, to others and to myself. When you will read the book, you will feel it is not linear. Do not expect a well-crafted narrative. It will be made according to my self-image : strewn with pitfalls and obstacles, breaks and doubts, while giving a sense to move forward, to chart its course, to gradually build its place, its identity, to accept itself. Thus, you will progress in the reading while progressing within my state of mind. You will enter into my most intimate thoughts. Along with the publisher, Light Motiv's team, as well as the graphic designer Bureau Kayser, we are currently working on the design and making of the book. Nothing is final yet, as much for the arrangement of texts - images as for the book cover. That is why we are sharing here some first drafts that have not been finalized yet. Here are the first cover ideas: Flat open book - Cover (closed flaps) Flat open book - Cover (open flaps - external view) Flat open book - Cover (open flaps - interior view) And here are some views of internal pages : Technical characteristics of the book: Release date: April 2023 Photographs and text: Maëva Benaiche Foreword: Caroline Benichou Graphic design: Bureau Kayser Format: 16.5 x 24 cm - 96 pages with 44 black and white photographs Print run of (at least) 600 copies Cover printed on ColorPlan Cobalt (270gr) or Materica Colbalt (270gr) - sewn unglued spine softcover Inner blocks on Munken Lynx Rough 120gr ISBN: 9791095118251 Public price: €32 (presale price for the KissKiss campaign: €28) Rewards Here is a quick reminder of the rewards available for this campaign: Star Pack: one copy of the book Staccato + one signed postcard 10x15cm (the template of the card is the same than the template for the print number 1) Duo Pack: two copies of the book Staccato + 2 signed postcards 10x15 cm (the template of the card is the same than the template for the print number 1) Print Pack: one signed copy of the book Staccato + one signed postcard 10x15cm + one limited print, numbered and signed, of the book format 16x24cm on Fine Art 310gr paper (4 templates to choose from, visible below, 20 copies per template) ALL Pack: one signed copy of the book Staccato + one signed postcard + one limited print, numbered and signed, of the book format 16x24cm on Fine Art 310gr paper (4 templates to choose from, visible below, 20 copies per template) + one photo session with Maëva Benaiche (date to be decided upon availability) NB: Rewards and books will be shipped in April, just after the official date release. Who is leading this project? "At the time, I did not know how to reply, I withdrew to protect myself without having been able to show her the impact of her words on me. I buried them deep down, but they ended up eating away my shields until they overflowed my soul and poured out in a steady stream out of me. This is when I decided to do something about it. That bad experience, among others, had to stop invading my thoughts and inspiring my actions, I had to emerge outside to spread more tolerance in our lives." My name is Maëva Benaiche, I am 25 years old and I was born in Toulouse on December 17, 1996. After obtaining a DUT in Physical Measurements at Paul Sabatier University, and starting on an engineering course, I finally joined the Toulouse ETPA in 2018. I obtained the "Grand Prix Photo" in 2021. My photographic work allows me to reveal feelings that I would be unable to express through a simple speech. Indeed, I am a stutterer and I have been since I was 8 years old. The act of photographing allows me, day after day, to discover myself and constitutes an essential role in my quest for identity.