Like many photographic artists, Eva Mayer is interested in the themes of disappearance and death. This is no doubt due to the very characteristics of photography. By giving the impression of extracting the model from time, of arresting him on the path to his ineluctable destiny, the photograph presents itself as a simulacrum of eternity. But this is no more than an illusion, since the photograph does not isolate the being: at best, it establishes itself as its trace.
This was the path taken by René Char, who asserted that a poet must leave traces of his passage, not proofs, and that only traces make us dream. Char's approach is not only to poetry, but also to the work of art. Following this line of thought, François Soulages places the photograph as a trace, creating a tension towards the dream of the viewer. With Mayer, however, the dream also comes into play before the picture is taken, in the privileged relationship she maintains with her models. For if photography is incapable of proving existence in itself, resigning itself to the loss of what it represents and the mystery that remains, it can open up to fiction. Photography doesn't fix the subject at a precise moment in its daily life, but the dreamed-of subject at a moment in its own fable. It does not fix the being, but metamorphoses it, modifies its environment, and this transformation continues as soon as we look at the photo or try to tell its story.
- Jean-François Caron
