Diane Ducruet

Millennium Contributor Diane Ducruet has a new book publication and is also featured in View Magazine;

(...) Diane Ducruet takes pride of place in our ‘Young Talent’ section and reveals her ‘Family Games’ (which include the series ‘Males posing’ nominated in the Rencontres d’Arles 2008 Voies Off Prize). The photographic work shown in this magazine is now available in a stunning publication, a carefully thought out object for a work which again is a collection. As Diane presses the shutter, it really is, here and there, her father and brother who stoically pose. The maternal trait gives the whole thing a familiar feel. Even if it all ends in tears, ‘Family Games’ invites us to reconsider our relationships, our family ties and, under the surface, their elasticity... (...)

http://www.viewmag.be/

“Family Games”
Box with two books each 45 pages - Texts & Photography
Photography Diane Ducruet - Texts by Milou - Drawings by Sophie Ducruet
Publisher Le Caillou Bleu, Brussels, Belgium

I heard the farmer’s wife talking to her cockerel. Her voice was soft and her words were sweet while her pink hands chopped off its head. As the blood flowed, so did her speech, but later not a word was uttered as she sat on her stool and plucked him... Serving up a goose, offering alcohol or a cigarette... We are well-mannered in the face of pleasure, and in any case the most moving of all pleasures is murder in a good cause.

So it goes with floods, drowning people like cats, freeing the Earth of its rubbish and bad habits ... When you do away with the past, not everything goes into the dustbin at the same rate... The last century was difficult for the monarchs and later became unbearable in the shadow of the holocaust. There have been plenty of victims over the past hundred years, those that the papers talk about and those no one cares for. But one has intrigued me for some time, and that is the family.

For reasons that do not concern the reader, I was born illegitimate, a lovechild. But family love is no small matter and it took me some time to avoid spinning round in this maelstrom of feelings and mental reservations, because love needs proof and I was by definition proof of love, not chance... I shall never know if chance does things better than love, but crowned as I was with my oddness, I remained odd, that is to say, trusting more in chance than in tenderness... I am not troubled by the downfall of the “Family”, it’s tough old armour that’s withstood worse blows. A hundred years ago, three-quarters of French people worked in family businesses. They learnt about life and tools, about wood, iron, stone, leather, animals, money, sex and prayer... Every charcoal burner was emperor in his own empire, no less so than any lord, or the baker at his bakery... your mother’s waters broke in the bed where your great-grandfather lost his head... The well-off could afford the luxury of a bedroom, the others piled together in a single room where both passions and soup were consumed. Princes were not much different and the same fairy stories were told at Versailles and in the mills... There was little privacy in families, because days and nights were passed under the watchful eye of one’s relations and paternal authority. The only individual space was to be found in one’s own first name, or behind closed eyes just before sleep.

An army of jurists, psychologists, educators, teachers, televisions and corkscrews have taken over the father’s figurehead... Nobody can tell others what to do any more because everyone « exists » and defends their own « identity », anyone can lay their hands on some money, people go abroad to work, move far from home for their studies, throw themselves into love affairs armed with pills, condoms and antibiotics under the protection of a social worker and family counsellors... Regardless of income, and whether we are adults or minors, we become “socialised” at nursery school, educated by pedagogues or before a screen. A television channel has just been launched for babies from birth to six months... every child has its own bedroom, computer, a father and mother, and one in three has two bedrooms, two computers, a father, a step-father, a mother and a step-mother... In this plentiful society, the family belongs to the shortages of yesteryear. All that remains in the home are Oedipus complexes, neuroses, psychoses and other joys of life together... the dirty linen of lovelessness and poverty. Some imaginative souls have embarked on same-sex parenting, to quench their desire for parenthood... But such things are only minor novelties when one considers what havoc can be caused by runs on the stock exchange...

It isn’t easy to provide for the selfish and the fickle. When the family bore the world on its shoulders, the home was a place of work and an arena for the fight for survival. To smooth the way, flowers were placed on windowsills; rouge dusted on cheeks and the groin was surrounded by mystery. The cellar and the wardrobe were stocked in readiness for big occasions. ... To keep cheerful, one had to have the ancestral nose and that of one’s mother... secrets were better kept on home-stuffed pillows ... Anyone wanting to see the big wide world was well advised to become a sailor, a monk, a poet or a soldier. We would still only be making children and books, if at a time of global warming, animal extinction and disappearing forests, we did not live in hope of a flood to escape onto a desert island and make a fresh start.

Love is a blackmailer who comes straight to the point. Since to have company often involves some self-sacrifice, you might as well have children and be guaranteed excellent company. You have to have a nose for the right person, it’s a matter of pheromones... and memory too, since our ancestors never really leave us, they map us out from head to toe, give us this or that slant and influence our tastes... Like attracts like, there are keyholes to doors that open onto gardens and others that lead to Bluebeard’s cupboard. Knowing one’s progeny makes it easier to see what is in front of us and to reach it by the shortest route. Sex adds a flowery touch and a hint of perfume but as regards good management it doesn’t make much difference... When you change from the singular to the plural, you have to multiply yourself even more to give each one what they do and don’t expect, allowing for all cases. It’s your job to take as long as it takes to prepare yourself for having two heads, four arms and four legs. Your ancestors did not warn you that humans need to be repotted at every generation, or they may run the risk of fading and shrivelling up in just a few seasons.

Carrying one’s ancestors on one’s shoulders, holding one’s children by the hand, talking to them as you walk together about your joys and hiding your sorrows, paying your dues to the species, to time and chance, these are the rules of genetic transmission. The lucky ones are so worn out by it all that death comes as a relief, a chance to take it easy and just think of oneself.... The weak take the easy way out, giving in to the scroungers, liars and cannibals ... They say that genes will soon be on general sale, as precious as caviar at a cocktail party, and that life will be bearable and happiness available to all. We can play jacks with genetics, fatten up magistrates, make centenarians blush and climb the navel of the world... but for now, we are merely the descendants of those men and women, parents to six children around the year one thousand.

Milou, for family games 2008

Males posing / Father & Son dancing Tango / Photos Diane Ducruet - Dessin/Drawing Sophie Ducruet