“Présence de l'Absence”

06.07 > 31.07.2026

Open daily from 10:30 to 14:00 and from 17:00 to 20:00

(closed Tuesday and Wednesday)

L'Appartement, 6 Rue Dulau, 13200 Arles

Elena Henneberg

«Présence of Absence»

I do not ask myself why I make photographs, but rather why I cannot help making them…

Photography has never been a profession for me in the conventional sense.
It became a way of not losing myself.
A way of remaining connected to myself and at peace with myself.
A way of returning to an inner place I call home.

Sometimes, a necessity to stop.
Sometimes, a refuge.
Sometimes, an attempt to hold on to something destined to disappear.

A search for myself.
A return to myself.
Transformation.

Life unfolding—not through academic conventions, but through an intuitive and experimental photographic practice.

I draw no distinction between life and art.

Each of my works is, for me, an answer followed by a question mark.

A person can never be fully understood, not even by themselves.
There is always something elusive.
Something hidden.
Something both absent and present.

That is what Présence de l’absence is about…

For me, photography is not merely an image. More often than not, I do not think about the final result. What matters to me is the process itself: the state I enter while photographing—being present within the moment and within time, while simultaneously absent; silence, breath, a form of meditation.

I trust the space and allow it to absorb me without losing myself, becoming part of it while remaining present.
Humility without self-destruction.
An awareness of the world’s vastness without diminishing my own worth.

It is a deeply personal language, almost a diary.

I need to be within this process—alone with myself, engaged in an honest inner dialogue, free from haste, noise, or the need to prove anything to anyone. Here I am simultaneously the model and the artist, and also the material itself—the modelling clay from which I can create an endless number of images, shaped by memory, sensitivity, and my perception of the world—and of myself.

Not the world and me, but I am the world.

• the body as artistic material;
• woman as creator rather than object;
• the freedom to be different;
• absolute sincerity, free from the need to conform to anyone else’s expectations;
• the absence of the external gaze and limitations.

There is no theory behind my work, no “correct” way of seeing, nothing I seek to impose or prove.
There is only a path back to myself and an ongoing dialogue within myself.
There is a desire for peace and harmony.

In the act of photographing, I experience freedom and serenity; I feel at home.

I do not seek “beautiful pictures,” nor do I pursue perfect forms.
I allow things to unfold as they will.

I allow movement to blur the contours.
I allow light to change form.
I allow darkness to absorb me without destroying me.
I allow time to leave its traces.

A free flight of imagination and courage…

A visual paradox:

The face is present, and yet it is not.
The reflection appears, and disappears.
The body exists, and does not.
A moment of presence exists only because it is already disappearing…

An exploration of duality and wholeness, and of the self as part of a larger natural and existential process.

Since childhood, I have been drawn to forms of beauty that are strange, unfinished, and imperfect: unfinished drawings, raw sketches, the first brushstrokes left upon a canvas, patiently awaiting their artist…

As though incompleteness itself were the essence of life…

I am not afraid of what is considered “ugly”; I am afraid of what is insincere.

For me, there is no torment in choosing the so-called “light side”:

purity — dirt
life — death

as parts of a single whole.

How would we recognize purity without dirt?
Life would hardly be valued without death.

Light and shadow cannot exist without one another…

What interests me is not perfection, but the truth of the moment.
Not a pose.
Not a role.
Not a constructed image, but that rare state in which a person ceases to defend themselves and simply exists—removing the mask, unafraid of vulnerability, and therefore strong.

In my work, the image often loses its clarity. The face becomes blurred, the body dissolves into water, hair and fabric drift through space, reflections disappear behind glass, and movement erases contours as though trying to vanish altogether.
Yet it is precisely within this disappearance that presence emerges for me…

The life of the image between photography and painting.
Transformation and dissolution as a search for the self.

I could endlessly name the artists, poets, photographers, and filmmakers who inspire me.
Yet some of the most influential forces in my life have been nature itself—and life itself.

The tragedy of the artist lies in the impossibility of ever attaining the perfection of nature…

With its dried-up reservoirs, fallen trees, sun-scorched fields, it always remains perfect in the harmony of its forms and colours, its light and shadows…

Présence de l’absence is the presence of that which slips away in order to be.

Absence is not lack.
It is not emptiness.
It is another form of presence.

Not everything needs to be shown in order to exist…