Hovering over leftovers
This is the word we use to refer to the waste of a meal : what’s left and what has to be collected. These « leftovers » are, etymologically speaking, what is left when the meal is over.
So, day after day, over and over, methodically, obsessively, Agne hovers around and picks up the clues of her culinary lifestyle : cherry stalks, nutshells, banana skins, the occasional thyme leaf surviving a stew, an ice cream wrapping or a cork from a bottle of wine.
This list could seem entomological, even a bit « police enquiry » style.
Especially as the look comes from above : it dominates the stage, as if it were a police detective’s look – or, more inquisitive, a satellite-spy look (or even an omniscient God the Father’s look).
And especially as the photographic protocol is totally uncompromising : it’s from a bird’s eye view, with a square format and a focused framing. The shadows are short, and the perspective is crushed by overhanging. Written in a quadrangle (the frame of the photo), a circle (plate) is driven by a horizontal line (toothpick…) and two small triangles (cheese rinds !) : one comes to think about these abstract paintings that we used to – quite rightly this time – classify into the category of « concrete art ». Indeed, nothing more concrete than this one abstraction : concrete just like what we crunch ! Agne’s photos talk to our belly, but they do touch our heart.
These leftovers are left but they’re not really over : all the same, all different… We can read daylight in them, the key of a mood, and the taste of the moment.
Giving away the daily proofs of her existence, Agne suggests we should test ourselves alive.
Jean Louis Roux
