Hannah Rosales Reviews Laurence Demaison

Laurence Demaison is a contemporary French photographer who was born in 1965. She attended the School of Architecture of Strasbourg. She started experimenting with photography in 1990 and started working on her first self-portraits in 1993. She occasionally uses mannequins and dolls and has since 2010. However she exclusively created self-portraits from 1993 to 2009. "The used techniques – shot, development, print – are analogicals and realized by the author. No particular manipulation intervenes beyond the shot (except chemical inversion of films for some series)."

In her art, she uses herself as the subject instead of prior models. She explores the distortion of her body as a way that she can accept herself in that form. Her self-portraits also compose of reflective qualities with shadowy effects of light and negative images. This results in "paper phantoms" where she herself is there but it is like she disappears within a moment. 

In the first photograph, the water effect distorts much of her face. It is distorted so much, that much of her face is very abstract-like, whereas in the second photograph, it uses the water effect to enhance some of her facial features by making them larger and more bulgy.