Sylvie Blocher
French (Alsace, France, 1953)Living Pictures / Men in Gold
Sylvie Blocher listens to the desires, dreams, anxieties, and stories of individuals who volunteer to be filmed, then compiles footage of the sessions into nuanced group portraits.
The subjects of her series live in the same region or work in similar professions. Men in Gold, commissioned by SFMOMA and filmed in San Francisco, centers on several people who have realized the American dream of business success. The majority of them work as executives, venture capitalists, or designers.
The Bay Area is one of the few places in the world that represents, in both tangible and symbolic ways, the opportunity to achieve one's creative and financial ambitions. Blocher is fascinated by how these people articulate their relationship to desire and success.
Blocher's videos reveal the humanness of these "living picture" as the subjects visibly fluctuate between controlled performance and momentary abandonment. Within the basic framework of the studio setting, Blocher establishes a multilayered dialogue between the individual and the group, between "I" and "us."
Keywords
portraits, men, seated, faces, interviews, Silicon Valley, California, intimacy, wealth
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