REVS Magazine (FL)
Issue 8 Delusion
Interview by Pirita Litmanen
August 2018
ENG
Brussels based Memymom is a photographic project between a mother Marilene Coolens (1953) and her daughter Lisa de Boeck (1985). They shared their story with us and talked about their latest series The Umbilical Vein, an analogue photo archive of Marilène’s photographs of Lisa playing theater sketches while she was growing up, from 1990 to 2003. The pictures don’t only tell the story of a mother and daughter but also deal with their view on the world of the 1990s.
Did you work with photography already before you started taking pictures of Lisa?
Marilène: No, I never studied arts.
When I was little I had to make a choice between sports or drawing and sports made me happy. I could not imagine sitting on a chair a drawing the whole time, so I never second guessed that decision. Luckily photography is usually quite physical.
I did always have a camera, the first black box vintage camera I got from my mother when I was nine. So images, art and photography were never far away, I took a great interest into all of those through the years.
How and when did you start taking photos of Lisa? Do you remember the first pictures you took together?
Marilène: The first spontaneous shoot where Lisa started posing, was when she was 4 years old. She was wearing a red pajama with white dots. We had taken a plastic turquoise tablecloth off the kitchen table and Thomas, her brother, was holding it behind her to serve as the background. I remember his foot sticking out through a hole in the cloth. It marks our work to have an element that doesn’t seem right but in the end creates the feel and pushes the story even further.
Did you plan or style the photos you took or did Lisa just play around? Was there a message you wanted to deliver with the series or did everything come together later on?
Marilène: The fact that I always stimulated my children to play theatrical sketches, improvise, dance and dress-up, made this happen. In the beginning nothing was really planned, the moments offered themselves very spontaneously and it was always teamwork. After a few shoots, Lisa did start understanding rather quickly that she could go into character and she started behaving towards that. When she was doing something special or wearing something different, she knew that it would draw my attention and inspire me as well – so those were the moments I grabbed my camera and started photographing her. She loved being in front of the camera! It was triggered from both sides, without words, just feeling each other.
It was never meant as a message, though it was our exhaust valve, where we could react and show how we felt about certain things. Later on, the double layers started growing stronger when Lisa was growing up, because the understanding got even greater.
How did you end up making a book about the series?
Marilène: In the beginning of the twenty-first century my husband was looking at our images, back then exhibited on the closet in the corner of our living room. And after a thorough look he said “You should make a book”.
Lisa overheard that as well, but I never thought she would have remembered this. In 2010 Lisa started talking to me about this and made a very rough selection out of this analogue image archive, had it scanned for the first time in 2011 and was completely convinced that a book should be made. In 2012 she expressed her desire to exhibit it as well. Where there’s a will, there’s a way and I trust Lisa on her gut feeling. Selecting the images for the book and exhibition was not an easy task, not when you have an archive of over a thousand images and negatives in front of you. But over the years our eyes have been well trained, also because of our current series of work our choices are clear and intuitive.
When you were young how did you feel about yourself in the photos, what kind of memories do you have of the time?
Lisa: Looking back now it can be hard to realize that it is really me in those images, it can be a bit unsettling and unreal. I do take a certain distance of myself when working with these images.
I remember better the way it started when I was a bit older, we had this natural routine going when a shooting came up. It started with me putting on make up and searching out clothes, which my mom knew and she started automatically on the light and the scenery. It was me who came up with the characters, depending on the atmosphere, different metamorphoses would come out during the shooting.
Did the rest of the family have a role in your project, how did they feel about you taking photos?
Lisa: My father was a creative director in advertising back then, something that surely had its effect on the entirety of all this. We were pulsed enormously on creativity back home and from the very beginning my parents made sure we were up to date with art, travel and movies. I remember my father bringing home the very first Sony Handycam. From that moment on my two brothers and I had a stage. It all became normal for us. I remember how happy and almost histeric we became when he had connected the camera onto the TV and we could see that this filming had a direct output, that was amazing and above all inspiring.
When I started photographing as well, which was like a logical consequence, I was still encouraged by everyone the whole way through. In any case, I learned while doing what I wanted to do. If people disagree with my work, I disagree with them.
How did you manage to keep working together through all these years?
LIsa: Our working together still remains something that’s natural to us, it happened and never stopped happening. It surpasses the mother- daughter relationship, where the unconditional does play a strong part. There’s a mutual trust that makes us meet one another in the middle of the road.
Sometimes when we disagree, Marilène would state that she would quit ‘memymom’. I took that seriously in the beginning, now I see that as a joke, as a game between us where we challenge each other even more. I just joke back that I will go solo in that case.
What kind of projects do you work on these days?
Lisa: We’re in full process of finishing our solo exhibition ‘The Umbilical Vein’ at the Flemish House of Culture ‘De Brakke Grond’ in Amsterdam. This is an exhibition we want to bring to its fullest capacity over the years to come. And we finally get to relaunch some of our new projects we’ve started working on. They will focus on movie, dance and theatre.
What are your strongest and favourite memories of working together?
Lisa: When we were working on ‘Whodunnit’, one the most absurd things was when we went to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris for the final image ‘Compassionate Leave’. I was running around with only yellow satin cloth covering my body, while walking in between those graves, when people came near, I quickly hid myself inside a little mausoleum. When we touch this absurdity and ironic side of life, that’s the moment I love most.
And in general it’s the fact that you can rely on each other and that we don’t question ourselves in front of each other. I adore how I am not ashamed of myself when I’m alone in front of the camera with Marilène. When somebody else photographs me, it’s already much harder to let go of myself.
How would you describe your photographic work in relation to your real life as a mother and daughter - does it touch reality or is it completely made up?
Lisa: It touches reality in the sense that we work with people we also like, with whom we have an emotional connection and that lay in our line of being and working. Artists, dancers, musicians, writers and actors that we also appreciate for their artistic work. This is within our photographic work, our connection with our reality, all we make in the end comes from what we know and feel and where we believe we should be heading. It’s like we automatically look for the same understanding that Marilène and I have, an unspoken understanding. It’s also exciting to convince people, even though they mostly say yes right away. We love giving these people their ultimate freedom. When given the artistic freedom, we give and get the best.