The look of Vincent Ferrané’s new series, “Milky Way,” which documents his wife breast-feeding their infant child, is somewhere between that of fashion photography and of amateur home snapshots: starkly composed, brightly lit scenes present a world deeply private and tender—a mother and baby joined repeatedly in the act of nourishment, as the father looks on, present but apart. There is something monasterial in this new family’s home: low, slanted wood ceilings; a triptych formed in the reflection of a mirror; a hoodie in the shape of a halo—and it takes only slight tips of Ferrané’s wife’s head for the photos of her and the baby to resemble one famous “Madonna and Child” or another. The mood is often one of awe: milk squeezed from a nipple is captured as it arcs in individual droplets, like beads of water in the zoom of a nature photographer’s lens. In an underwater shot depicting a similar pinch of the breast, milk curls in a small white plume, a lock of Ferrané’s wife’s hair reddens, her submerged skin pales, and we seem to enter the realm of a Pre-Raphaelite dream (...) By Katie Ryder

Vincent Ferrané ’s Iconography XXV Figures of Jeanne Damas (Libraryman) is a study int he form of a book that piques my interest. It incorporates some interesting parables not only about how we fetishize pieces of the female body through the lens, but also how we use those relics, sacred or other as manifestations of said obsessions towards the public status of the subject. For example, apart from the outstanding use of Jeanne herself (former model) as subject, Ferrané crops in on Damas, but also focuses her disassembly through dress, or lack thereof. He reduces the language of a fashion icon to strands of hair, Jewellery and other various “pieces of Jeanne”. The title itself suggests a heavy French indebtedness to Catholic tradition, but borders on the blasphemous (yay) in its use of title depicting Jeanne as an icon, her role in semantic gesture as “Figures of”, like Christ. In suggesting studies like this, Ferrané is in effect asking us to dissect like Christ, the body of the contemporary influencer as icon of the world. The ploy is in the title. The same type of studies, if you are historically interested occur in many paintings such as in the work of Francis Bacon, but also in photographs. The studies of a dead Che Guevara by Marc Hutten, his laid out in a form like the deposition of Christ from the cross, with successive photographs of his head, eyes open, glazed and staring to the heavens are also reminiscent of the image Salome and the head of the Baptist John and may be considered but one of the studies in iconography that photography as medium has been employed to carry out and re-distribute lending iconic permissiveness to the medium’s ability. In theatrical form F. Holland Day’s emaciated self-portrait of himself upon the cross is also noteworthy, but that is a large body of work to unpack. You can find a proxy to the shroud of Turin if you look at the lipstick long enough (...) by Brad Feuerhelm

Vincent Ferrané’s photography celebrates the intimacy of the innocuous

The simple pleasures of domesticity are celebrated in Inner by Vincent Ferrané, a photography book encompassing fragments of a life lived together in lockdown.

The ambiguous title hints both at the inner circle of a relationship, precluding all others, and an inner light that here brings the body, gestures and intimate moments into sharp relief, the minutiae of a couple’s life together becoming emotional in the images’ objectivity.

‘Inner has something to do with interior, interiority and intimacy,’ Ferrané says. ‘It is a series that tries to make the link between several meanings related to intimacy; two mainly – first that of a close relationship, of a space that we share with someone and then this intimate space, this space to oneself, this interior in which one can immerse oneself. It's a space with physical elements, of course, one’s body in a room, one’s innocuous gestures, daily rituals that take place in one’s living room, on the edge of a bed, an armchair. But it is very much a mental space to which we try to have access here, an interiority which is also looked at and shared.’ (...) by Hannah Silver

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To finish, I want to talk about your project Every-day, where you went to see trans non-binary people in their privacy, while they were getting ready to leave their homes. Why are you so attracted to intimacy? I mean, I am very attracted to it, and the way people construct themselves within the objects they live with, so I want to know what you think.

Indeed, in my different projects, there is something related to the concept of construction, of self-construction and of giving it a new representation. And if I explore places of intimacy, it is undoubtedly because there that this selfhood idea is developed, these arrangements making it possible to bring about a singular being. I try by focusing on intimate, individual stories to question what we think is the generality and by an abusive extension the norm.

In the Every-day series, I captured the rituals of getting ready to go out for Ava, Jackie, Leo, Mathieu, Matthias, Maty and Raya who identify as transgender and non-binary. The photographs depict mundane scenes, but they are significant: they provide a glimpse into the subtle, yet important, ways in which people can express their identities, evading the binary system of feminine and masculine that society attaches to so many of these gestures. But if they appear first as a group, finally many things lead you to see the great beauty of individuals with personal histories and interests.

Do you have any projects that can be advanced to us? What can we expect from you?

I am currently working with curator Ingo Taubhorn on Family affairs, a collective photography exhibition that will take place at Deichtorhallen Hamburg and whose inaugural room will house my Milky Way series. The opening is scheduled for April 2021!