This is not a map, Wallonie, Clément Huylenbroeck

The beauty pageant candidates live the affordable dream. With their feverish performances and tartar free smiles, they can almost grasp it. Facing a crowd of excited eyes, they bend their bodies at the behest of an improvised choreographer. They surrender their hair, their flesh, their nails and their naivety to a cheap champagne-soaked audience poorly dressed up in its Sunday best. The attempt is beautiful; during the time of a pale performance inspired by the National Miss parade, they fantasize, imagine themselves the flagship of elegance. It is carried away by this vision that they curve themselves yet a bit more and make pants swell. At the end of the night, the communal dream turns into a heartbreak, a hurtful disenchantment; the bulging eyes turn away, the mouths hereafter drool for another.

12_Wallonia is produced in collaboration with Circulation(s), festival of young European photography.

Folded size: 11 x 25 cm
Unfolded size: 100 x 155 cm
Publisher: This is not a map
ISBN : 979-10-92398-04-5