Styling by Laëtitia Leporcq
Rebekka Deubner realized photograms for Chloé AW22's worldwide campaign, next to Zoë Ghertner.
These images were shot during Rebekka Deubner’s second journey to Fukushima-ken, in the summer of 2019. On 03.11.2011 a part of the north-east-coast was impacted by three major catastrophes: a naval quake, a tsunami, and lastly the explosion of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Deconstruction does not only causes annihilation, it also creates the occasion for new forms of life to emerge. ‘tempête après tempête’ portrays Fukushima through close-ups of inhabitants, scattered pieces of land, details of sea landscapes, moving elements of nature such as insects, humans, seaweed, pieces of bodies,… they all merge into a new and hybrid body.
Taking close-ups is a way of working that is essential to Rebekka’s practice. Looking at things from a near perspective, gives her the opportunity to feel their materiality and texture directly through her eyes. It is as if the lens of the camera is an extension of her touch. It also allows her and her subjects to experience a form of contemplation. Taking time to create a testimony of this land where all the scattered pieces were never been understood as a whole.
A selection of pictures were published in Tide Magazine. The whole serie has been published as a book at Art Paper Editions.
In Japanese celebration, dance and death have long been connected. Rebekka Deubner's photographs, taken during the festival of Obon, capture glimpses of this Buddhist celebration honoring the spirits of the ancestors and their presence among the living. These images of fireworks, body parts, masks, and textiles unveil 'Odori', the dance of Bon. At the heart of these five-hundred year old traditional celebrations, the costumes, music, and gestures are collected into an exhilarating trance that lends shape to the spirits of the deceased. With 'Odori', Rebekka Deubner composes picture loops that operate akin to amulets that wish to seek other inner worlds; highlighting the mystical, to escape reason and underline life's boundedness.
Squid milk is a collection of fragments of Rebekka's Japanese exodus edited in resonance and recurrence of forms, characters, and motifs, drawn from the daily life that Rebekka invents for herself, as well as from musical, cinematographic, and photographic references. The edition constructs the sequencing of a silent film for which Livio Mosca composed the soundtrack.
The soundtrack can be accessed here: https://enfancemusic.bandcamp.com/album/loreille-nacr-e
Squid milk is a collection of fragments of Rebekka's Japanese exodus edited in resonance and recurrence of forms, characters, and motifs, drawn from the daily life that Rebekka invents for herself, as well as from musical, cinematographic, and photographic references. The edition constructs the sequencing of a silent film for which Livio Mosca composed the soundtrack.
The soundtrack can be accessed here: https://enfancemusic.bandcamp.com/album/loreille-nacr-e
Rebekka Deubner photographed the Dead Sea in Jordan for Chloé.
Rebekka Deubner is in her own way a diarist. Her work falls within the continuity of this part of photography history, which claims an approach associating the banal, the micro-event, and self-writing. She takes photographs as close as possible to her own experience, groupings of images generally presented in a serial form, giving the feeling of a temporal and narrative continuum.
She has published her work with Art Paper Editions for "tempête après tempête", with Sasori for "Odori" and creates her own publishing house le rayon vert . éditions.
Rebekka Deubner is based in Paris.
Clients include: Chloé, Dior, Gabriela Hearst, Miu Miu, Sacaï, among others.
Selected exhibitions:
2024 « Science/Fiction. A Non-History of Plants», Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris
2023 Nominee at the 38th edition of the International Festival of Fashion, Photography & Accessories, Hyères
2023 « A partir d’elle », Le BAL, Paris
2023 « strip », Paris Photo, Paris