Deuil Blanc (EDT OF 30)

Flore Prebay
Deuil Blanc (EDT OF 30)

Photographs: Flore Prebay

Text: Flore Prebay

Publisher: Selfpublished

30 pages

Pictures: 28

Year: 2025

Price: 975 €

Comments: Softcover, 20,5 x 26,5 cm, inkjet printing, handmade watercolour on each print by Flore Prébay Book assembly and gluing by hand, sewing by Laurel Parker. Handmade hemp, linen and rag paper. Ruscombe paper. Limited edition of 30 copies, signed. Published in batches of 5. Limited edition 30 copied, signed. Edited in sets of 5, different papers per set.

My mother was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, accompanied by Charcot's disease.

I decided to go to Iceland, with the idea of taking an introspective journey. I thought I would find a unique portrait of the country, but in the end it was my mother's portrait that imposed itself on me. Since the announcement of her illness, I have been meditating on the notion of ‘white mourning’, that mourning that begins before the end, when the loved one is still there, but already drifting away. I seek to represent her without ever sinking into voyeurism of her condition. Images flash through my mind, charged with sensations and instability, reflecting her gradual disappearance. Little by little, her essence is revealed in her fading away: her voice dies out, her memories dissolve, her face becomes cracked skin. She slowly fades away, leaving only an empty shell.

This slow disappearance inspires me to use a fragile, almost organic material: handmade paper. I chose to collaborate with my uncle, a paper craftsman, to give shape to this transformation through a living, evolving, vulnerable medium. Faced with the fragility of existence, I feel a profound sense of powerlessness, and it is precisely this human condition that I wish to explore. The unstable landscapes of Iceland, between fire and ice, embody this inner tension in my eyes. They become a metaphor for the diseased brain, for neurons that disintegrate, like paper that is too thin.

Chance, impermanence, fragility: all of this is expressed through this medium. As it transforms, the paper becomes a witness to my changing grief. I add touches of paint, applied slowly, as if to prolong the connection, enrich the memory, inhabit this world that is slipping away. Through this material, I attempt to capture the fleeting beauty of existence.