Calendula (Marigold)

Carefully styled hair, elegant make-up and a heavy pearl necklace frame the fine features of a blooming young woman. Valérie Belin arranges and assembles these rigid shapes to create fictional icons evoking the 1950s. The figure of Calendula (Marigold) blends into the floral background, almost becoming part of it: she seems to bloom with charm and mystery. The technique of pigment printing gives the work its bold colours and clever contrasts.

Calendula (Marigold) is part of a series entitled Black-Eyed Susan I, by Valérie Belin. The French photographer borrows codes of feminine beauty from a bygone era to create these portraits. Each one bears the Latin name of a flower.

The photograph Calendula (Marigold) by Valérie Belin was first shown by the Pinault Collection in 2015, at the Gucci Museo in Florence.