La cigale et la fourmi
What does freedom actually mean, this ideal we all aspire to? After several years of photographing, reading, thinking and writing, photographer Karianne Bueno began to doubt its existence. She mirrors two lives in this work: her own and her cousin’s
“Evelyne has chosen the freest possible existence. She lives in a van and earns her money as a shepherd in the French mountains. Although our lives couldn’t have been further apart, I feel connected to her. Like her, I’ve always felt that the system of Western society doesn’t suit me – the emphasis on materialism and self-actualisation, the commodification of practically everything, the seeming blindness to what lies outside of yourself. But while my cousin got out, I stayed. With my practice as an escape.”
Bueno is attracted to individuals who place themselves outside of society. A romantic ideal that often shatters when she gets too close to it; as such, the window to another life also turns into a mirror for self-reflection. ‘La cigale et la fourmi’ (the cricket and the ant) is a long-term project about desire, social engineering and our vital connection to the earth and the other.
