Gaëlle is an ongoing visual narrative, born from Rey’s younger sister’s breakup after nine years of relationship. What began as an intimate gesture of accompaniment has evolved into a reflection on love, loss, and the pursuit of freedom. Through a photobook — and future installations — the project explores how a personal story can take on collective resonance, engaging with questions of gender, identity, and representation.
Initially centered on her sister — the fragments of her life, the moods shifting between despair and exhilaration, and the relentless flow of images she produced to stay afloat — the work gradually became a shared narrative. Through this process of collaboration, The stories of the two sisters entered into dialogue, forming a diptych of parallel archives shaped by similar experiences of rupture.
Influenced by artists and thinkers such as Nan Goldin, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Jean Baudrillard, Mickalene Thomas, and Jean-François Chevrier, the project reflects on the contemporary condition of the image. Like Goldin’s diaristic approach, Gaëlle turns the biographical into the universal, revealing how private pain can become a collective narrative — both a gesture of resistance and a celebration of survival.
Photobook
