2009 (negative); 2010 (print)

After-Prom: Adrien's Big Splash

Martine Fougeron

French, born 1954

Martine Fougeron was born in Paris, France, and lives in New York City. She is a fine art photographer, a painter, and formerly an expert in the perfume industry. Fougeron was educated at the Lycée Français in New York, Wellesley College in Massachusetts, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, and the International Center for Photography in New York. She exhibits in the United States and abroad; her work is held in major public and private collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Tête-à-Tête, Fougeron’s biographic story of her two adolescent sons, Nicolas and Adrien, is considered to be one of the best in contemporary photography and relatively unique as a mother/son documentation. Beginning in 2005, the artist created a visual diary of the boys and their friends primarily at their homes, making pictures that are naturally staged and delicately lit but alive with spontaneity. Fougeron states, “Adolescence is a liminal state between childhood and adulthood, between the feminine and the masculine, and between innocence and a burgeoning self-consciousness.”