Hello!

Today I am sharing a photoshoot my friend and collaborator Shahan Assadourian and I were invited to produce for young up and coming! brand Dig Spotty Prier. Shahan and I hadn't worked together in a few months so this was a really great opportunity to rekindle our creative flame (and creative frames... pardon my pun). The result is a melting pot of ideas we've had in the last few months paired with a lot of improvisation and reaction to the environment around us. It was the perfect time of the year to capture those autumn colors too...

A quick word about the models -- Motrya (pictured above) is a dancer that I met a couple years ago through friends of friends. I photographed her for the first time in 2022 and she's since been one of my favourite people to call upon for fashion shoots... a collaborator in the true sense. I feel like she carries the photoshoots in places that I wouldn't have imagined.

I know Pascual (pictured below) because he is my good friend Alix's younger brother. Shahan and I had been wanting to cast him for a few years, but the opportunity never came along. This summer Pascual performed as a backup dancer for one of Alix's shows and his moves stunned Shahan and I... Which made us want to work with him ASAP. Here he is taking a piss for our shoot.

And now the rest of the photos, uninterrupted by my narration... enjoy!

Avec amour,

Fatine

Bonjour!

This week I finally got around to scanning negatives from May 2024, more specifically behind the scenes photographs from a project by my friends Shahan Assadourian and Hugo Labrecque.

Shahan made a lifesize cutout from runway magazine scans that he collaged together. The look is composed with garments from Junya Watanabe (Fall 2000) and Hussein Chalayan (Spring 1999), photographed by Hugo with the help of strangers approached on the streets of Mile End.

The film was part of an unfortunate batch of rolls that I had forgotten to take out of my luggage during my trip to Vanvouver earlier in the spring. It got some pretty discernable color damage, and was really upsetting for certain other images on the roll, but I feel like it's also good for me to work outside of my comfort zone and out of control...

I have been wanting to shoot black and white more also, so I tested some of the images but found the cutout's vibrant yellow was too important to these images. But I do love this image of Shahan in black and white, the graphic shapes work well with grayscale.

A purist part of me also thinks that if I want to do black and white I should only shoot black and white film, really commit to the gesture, think in terms of contrasts rather than colors, have a completely different brain approach to it, etc etc... Always torn between experimentation and freedom vs. protocol and tradition... all these things are so respectable to me!

Avec amour,

Fatine

Bonsoir,

Three A's in this newsletter:

Quick note just to notify that 1. I will be a part of Galerie Eli Kerr's presentation at Art Toronto this week, alongside most of the artists of the gallery. Find us at booth 203, where I will be showing a photograph taken on a very special day in a Parisian suburb last May. More images from this place in a newsletter to come, sorry for the cliffhanger... I just have to be a bit mysterious sometimes...

2. I will be keeping an archive of my newsletters here. The archive is hosted on AAAAAAH, a website-making platform launched by web freak and boyfriend extraordinaire Morgan Ali two weeks ago. I have also used it to create an archive of my radio show Sharp Tongue, Sweet Fang. You can sign up for AAAAAAH here, and get a *lifetime* free account until November 1st!

And more promoting Montreal initiatives, 3. do not miss the launch of À Gogo at Système this Thursday October 29th. Tickets here! Great performers and an exciting new publication brought to you by my friends and artists Alexa Hawksworth and Max Keene. I'm always very impressed by the number of Xs and Ks in this couple's name, which I like to refer to as Maxlexa. Really rolls off the tongue...

Avec Amour (hidden 4th A!!!!),

First time in a long time...

Bonjour,

Welcome back to the FVS Diaries newsletter after a hiatus of over two years...

I want to be able to share more of my work outside of Instagram, give more insight on what I am photographing, and keep people who care in the loop without having to stumble upon 46 unsolicited aggressive ads every time I open the wretched app...

Today's newsletter is mostly writing and context for where I've been at these last 2-3 years, so not too many photos in this first edition back, but worry not, they will come... in time.

In 2024, my artistic world expanded faster than I could've imagined, which was both a blessing and a challenge. It started off in February 2024 with the announcement of my representation by Galerie Eli Kerr here in Montreal. I spent the next 12 months juggling three solo exhibitions, two book launches, three art fairs, two group shows and a couple panel talks, all this while bussing tables three nights a week at my restaurant job. I was more broke than ever and asking myself very seriously "am I a fucking idiot?" on a daily basis. I was thinking about going back to school to study psychology and get some semblance of a real career and livelihood. Then in November 2024 I was awarded the Pierre-Ayot prize, a godsend which allowed me to somewhat get back on my feet and gave me the twelfth wind I needed to finish off that year preparing another solo show for the next year. 2025 started off in a similar overworked fashion, and culminated in the month of April with my last solo exhibition to this day, The Lion's Share at Galerie Eli Kerr.

It's been about a year and a half since The Lion's Share, and since then I've shown work in a few fairs, festivals and group shows, had a residency at Cité des Arts in Paris, and got awarded the Lynne Cohen prize from the MNBAQ. I’ve felt extremely lucky to have all these opportunities. But through all of it, I have actually been shooting much less, and I have felt a huge shift in my practice and how I approach my medium.

Photography has always been part of my life, and a huge tool in relating to others and preserving a sense of nostalgia and the sacred, two concepts that are fundamental to how I approach Love, and Love is what fuels my photography, etc etc... Photography is at the core of how I can make sense of what inhabits me, and it is the purest form of expressing my gratitude. I can offer people who cross my path portraits of themselves, and it serves as a way of entering in contact with them, and thanking them for making the time. I cannot count the ways in which photography has enhanced my joys, has helped me make peace with loss, has allowed me to propel myself through life with a fundamental sense of hope.

This is why it was quite complicated for me to find myself in a situation where, after years of pushing my craft and trying to gain momentum with my practice, I felt as though the recognition I was getting very publicly and the opportunities I had created for myself were at odds with the sincerity of what I had been doing this whole time. The acknowledgement has felt and still feels like it is coming with expectations for more work, for new subjects, for more intimacy, and ultimately feels like a pressure to extract more from a practice — from a life — where I have been naturally highlighting the specificities and affect of the world around me at my own pace.

Holding up my camera has felt different in the last two years. I worry that friends think to themselves that I am hunting for images for my next show, or that they wonder if they will end up in one of my books. I worry about protecting something that has felt so natural and so essential in my way of being in contact with people and places, of playing with my friends and family. I worry about forcing things to happen. I worry about unconsciously making works strategically, in the hope of selling them. I worry about repeating myself, about having "peaked" — it still feels like everything I've ever wanted to say and show was encapsulated in The Lion's Share's works and exhibition statement. And so, in the last 2 years, I have been shooting less. It happened naturally, and has allowed me to think on this notion of protection and of deep respect for my medium. It has also given me time to question my own sincerity and think of how I want to move forward with my Art Career™, of what scale I feel comfortable expanding to.

I have been in a more steady rhythm of shooting since the spring. After my residency in Paris near some of my closest friends then spending my whole summer falling in love, I am excited to realize I am inspired to shoot more, as it highlights my enthusiasm... I think I have found my natural approach again, where I no longer doubt my intentions and focus on the housekeeping of an archive of my life and the people in it. I am a romantic and I mythologize, therefore I believe that photography is my mission and my purpose, and so I fulfil it. I trust that whatever comes from that will be meant to happen, because I know that all that matters is that I protect my practice and be clear with my intentions. There are exciting photos and shows coming soon that I will be sharing in the upcoming newsletters… In the meantime, you can still find me bussing tables at Pichai, I'm usually there Mondays and Saturdays.

Avec amour,

Fatine