“I tell stories from my personal domain that are specific, yet universal. Returning to similar subjects, narrating them in different ways — I try to peel of layers, touching upon visceral aspects of life — whether it is in a film, a photograph, a performance or an installation. I am interested in exploring a world that resides between dream and a wakeful state. A realm of images, sounds and fragmented tales (without the necessity of an obvious narrative). I hope they will function as a catalyst for the viewer’s personal fantasies and be a door into self discovery.”
— Florence Montmare
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Illuminations

Reciprocity Failure
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In 2002 my relationship was slowly falling apart. While trying to save our relationship it became obvious the break had become inevitable. As a way of documenting our last days together, I started making one photograph every night. The camera shutter was left opened for 3 to 8 hours every night in front of our bed in a darkened bedroom, and as the beginning morning light arrived the exposure was interrupted. It is a private journal, documenting time and memory, where present meets past.  

PRESS RELEASE

“...when love and companionship encounters longing and disconnection”
— Florence Montmare
“An enlightening exhibition about love and loss... inspired by impending heart break... anyone who has experienced it just want to move on, but you were documenting it!”
— Contessa Brewer, NBC
“Florence Montmare took that experience and turned it on its head ... incredibly beautiful and, dare we say it, quite poignant.”
— TimeOut New York
“A multi-sensory experience of the relationship and its demise”
— New York Post
“A view from the foot of her bed, the most intimate of place you can find suddenly becomes universal”
— Posture Magazine
 

Grove

“Before my father passed away he said ‘One day you will realize where you belong, and you will go home.’ This is about that journey”
— Florence Montmare

Growing up in Sweden, I often felt torn between cultures: Sweden, Greece and Austria (where I was born). My father left early to start a new life in his native Greece. In 2007 he passed away in cancer, leaving behind property on the island of Crete. Division of land between people is a premise for conflict. While my two brothers inherited houses and land, being a woman, I was given the property with the least value — half of an olive grove up in the hills. Could I live in what had been given to me, in what had come to symbolize my roots and origin?

As an experiment I traveled to Crete to spend time in the grove and to explore my personal history. Essentially a diary — Grove is an investigation of time, and deals with the physicality, surface and ambiguities of the imaginary and material world.  A metaphor for impermanence; my body asleep in the hammock, dissolves and re-materializes through night-long exposures.

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“Threshold is a point of entry, an intensity that must be exceeded for a condition to be manifested”