The images below were taken at the Smith-Lesouëf Library, Nogent-sur-Marne, France. Kindly facilitated by the Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques, we were given access to archival material of the Smith sisters.
Most of the original photographs were taken by Jeanne Smith (1857-1943), portraying the life of her sister Madeleine (1864-1940), including her art-practise and her teacher Jean-Jacques Henner. Some photos also show Ottilie Roederstein, her peer, her sister's friend and teacher at times, who resided with the sisters for some summers and became Jeanne’s lover around the turn of the century, before Ottilie left Paris for Frankfurt, Germany.
Over a two year period, Catherine Sicot and I met several times with Michel Sarnelli (Project manager, la Société d’histoire d’Aubervilliers) exploring some old industrial sites and the buildings of the convent of the former Sisters Convent in Aubervilliers, France.
The following images were taken during a tour of the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF) laboratories and their restoration-department in Paris in May of 2014, and subsequent visits during the x-raying process of two of Sophie La Rosière’s works in January 2016.
Professor Masood Hassan and students Emelie Regimbal and Sumon Mazeed at the Michener Institute in Toronto x-rayed 8 ‘Black Paintings’ during the course of the assessment of Sophie a Ropsière’s legacy.
In January 2014 Carlos Semedo, Catherine Sicot and I explored the neighbourhood of Saint Denis, a northern suburb of Paris to research geographic locations as a possible setting for Sophie La Rosière’s story.
A “Dîner de têtes” took place on the 12th of May 2016 at Villa Vassilieff, Paris. The student-group of the Ecole Européenne Supérieure d’Art de Bretagne, historians, curators, psychoanalysts, and scientists came together to celebrate the end of my residency and the research phase of the project.
