Acedia
Louise Desnos
2024 — France
About this series
Acedia : State of pain and affliction linked to a lack of motivation, a weariness and disenchantment.
Is lazyness a complete renunciation leading to self-abandonment and melancholy or ultimate wisdom, clarity in inactivity and renouncement ?
Laziness can be seen as freedom : time belongs to the one that seizes it for himself. Time invested freely leads to an act of creation that allows someone to explore the unknown and dream, and to a politic act of resistance in its opposition to the alienation of work, consumerism, competitive capitalistic system, and the constant acceleration of society.
Idleness is often linked to a feeling of guilt, preventing one from accessing its benefits.
It brings free time to think, that can be turned to existential doubts and melancholy. Acedia could be defined as an incapacity to love and accept one’s doubts, so that one is merely a victim of them. When laziness can be a state of grace, acedia is then a troubled refusal.
Lazyness has become a common thread in my practice. For me, it is first and foremost a means of production, since the time freed from responsabilities and remunerative work is the time I invest freely. By focusing on my doubts and my scattered dreams. By pictures of random elements that are both significant and insignificant, but which find no other link than a kind of everyday chance, I’ve built this collection of images. My mind wander, gets lost, focuses on an element, gives it importance and then resumes its movement.
In most of these images, it’s about non events where signs of the time remain discreet. Sloth, incarnated by my characters, means their search for freedom or a space for introspection. (Book: Acedia by Louise Desnos)
Photographer: Louise Desnos
Nationality: French
Based in: Paris, France
Website: agencevu.com/en/photographer/louise-desnos
Instagram: @louise.desnos
Louise Desnos (1991) is a French photographer living and working in Paris. She has oscillated between artistic projects and commissions since completing her studies in 2017 and has been represented by the Vu’ agency since 2022.
While her approach could be described as naturalistic, she also creates situations and “playgrounds” that are fertile for the production of images. Her gaze focuses on details, bodies, identities and territories, in an endless search for signs. In 2024, she published her first book, Acedia, with Witty Books.
Launched in 2016 by the Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival, her work has subsequently been exhibited in France, notably at the Villa Noailles, La Villette, the MUCEM, 104, the Musée des Abattoirs and the Laurent Godin gallery, and internationally, notably at the Festival Off Bratislava and in China, notably at the Three Shadows photography art centre in Xiamen.
At the same time, she is developing a body of commissioned work, touching on portraiture, documentary and fashion, working for the Washington Post, M le Monde, Les Inrocks, Kinfolk, Nike, Le Bon Marché, Citadium, Carne Bollente and others. She also works with institutions such as the Villa Noailles, the Théâtre du Rond Point, the Maison Populaire de Montreuil, La Horde and the Ballet National de Marseille, as well as with artists, designers and directors with whom she feels an affinity.