Katherine-Marie Pagé

F2 met Parisian-based photographer Katherine-Marie Pagé at the Arles festival, and learnt of her individual approach to publishing work in special edition, handmade collections. Here, she tells Lara Holmes about the decision to leave her job as a lawyer, and how she now makes a living working with aid agencies and producing personalised books of work from Haïti, Siberia and Paris

Katherine-Marie Pagé says the decision to give up her career in law was not taken lightly. “Coming from a family of lawyers”, she comments, “I studied law and then went onto work in that field until the year 2000. But I realised I wasn’t happy, and made the decision to change my life.

“I was introduced to photography at the age of nine, when my mother gave me her camera. It’s now gone beyond a passion, becoming a medium I can combine with my writing ability to create worthwhile projects. I started out producing handmade books about Haïti, and have gone on to produce work on other countries, sometimes in collaboration with aid agencies.

Beginnings

“After my first vacation to Haïti in the late 1990s, I met a well-known expert in neonatology at a conference in Paris. He was studying young children’s behaviour resulting from the trauma of war and similar situations. He was a scientific consultant for an aid agency, and he proposed I join a team of doctors on a trip to Bangladesh, to look at the behaviour of children in orphanages.

“I went, and it was not long after I got back that I began to question my career, my life and myself. I held an exhibition of the Bangladeshi work, but continued to work as a lawyer, commencing a postgraduate diploma in intellectual property.

“Towards the end of 1998, I realised that I wanted to do photography with a meaningful agenda - it was a big jump without security but I decided to do it.

“In 1999, I returned to Haïti to live for five months, and found myself regularly travelling from there to Paris until 2001. The first trip had taught me to adapt to environments and to think about how I approach people, as situations can easily become dangerous, and this understanding helped in developing later projects.

“I went to the south of the country, meeting people and learning about their lives - taking pictures of the unnoticed subtleties, daily troubles and social interactions. I was regularly invited into peoples’ homes, and became inspired by their strong resilience, pride, hope and positive thinking.

“In 2001, I exhibited this body of work in association with UNESCO at the Haïtian Embassy in Paris, which coincided with my first publication. A handmade book, it was sponsored by American Airlines and three Haitian companies, and proved to be a best-seller, now distributed through French Amazon.

Second book

“I went to the Haïtian capital, Port-au-Prince, to promote the book, and got invited to stay in the north of the island. I spent a year preparing my second book, which was published during the war there in 2003. I used the money from the first book to finance the second, and they currently circulate in France and Haïti. I’ve had invitations to exhibit the images in Guyana, Benin, Belgium, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Canada, and the US.

Further bodies of work

“In December 2005, I published my third book, Ile Saint-Louis, Paris. Islands moments …, continuing with the handmade concept. I produced 200 limited edition books and sold them for 60 euros at exhibitions. By handmaking them in limited editions, I am able to concentrate on specialist subjects which might not appeal to commercial publishers, and my latest book, Altaï: A bus in Siberia, looks primarily at the people over a 30-page text and image package, printed at home, and made to commission only. I have created a 15x10cm special edition collection, including calendars and notebooks, for private clients, shops and companies, who require them for special events.

Representation

“My work is represented in Paris by Ciric Agency and in the United States by Wheelhorse Gallery. I work with digital cameras as they accommodate my nomadic practice, and I travel light using a 50mm, 70mm and 24mm lens. I decide before I go out whether I am going to shoot black and white or colour, and set the camera accordingly. I choose not to modify my images in Photoshop.

Self-employment

“I am self employed. I have to declare my sales as an author of original works, and also as a producer of handmade books, I am required to declare my work to the Artists House. The French privacy laws have not affected me yet, but having worked in law, I am careful to ensure that I have authorisation from all concerned parties for each publication.

Future work

“I am currently preparing another project in Haïti, and one on New York. Although it has proven extremely difficult at times to work independently, I have sold over 4000 books in the last 31/2 years, and I’ll continue to use my camera to voice my concerns, for as long as they have relevance.”

© 2008 F2 Freelance Photographer, published by EC1 publishing • site copyright notice here