A woman photographer in 2021, an interview with Lisa Miquet

The photographer Lisa Miquet agreed to share with us about her art. Here is the full interview.

Solène: How did you start in photography?

Lisa Miquet: When I was a teenager I was very bored and it was the beginning of digital cameras, in my family we had a small camera not very powerful but I had fun with it, then there was the arrival of phones that took pictures, during all the middle school, all the high school I was taking pics of everyone, I was a little bit "the girl who took pictures", I went to the photo club of the high school. I always made pictures. I've been taking pictures since I was 13 and now, I'm 30, so most of my life, I’ve been taking pictures.

Solène: How do you describe your art?

Lisa Miquet: As an artist, It's complicated to describe your own creations but what I try to do most of the time is to put humor in my images, to have a quirky side. And also, I try to make committed works.

Solène: Do you call yourself a feminist?

Lisa Miquet: Yes of course, I'm for equality between men and women. That's feminism.

Solène: How did you get the ideas for your projects like Blue Blood, or more recently last December your photograph that was shared thousands of times against menstrual precariousness?

Lisa Miquet: For the project "Sang bleu", I've always been fascinated by the advertisements for sanitary protections in which we saw women rollerblading, in amusement parks, having fun. It's out of step with the everyday life, where we are rolled up with a hot water bottle and where we only want to take painkillers and the ads show totally different things and especially this famous blue liquid supposed to symbolize the blood of menstruation. At first, I thought it was a way to symbolize blood in general in advertisements but then I discovered a video of a dental awareness campaign where we see a man spitting blood, from there I thought "it's not the blood that is the problem but menstruation. There's a real taboo", so I wanted to imagine a world where we would all have blue blood, I found it funny to put this imaginary world in pictures and there was an interesting pun, because writing "vous êtes de sang bleu" (=”you’re of blue blood”) also means "being of royal blood", it was a funny way to tell to all the persons who have menstruation that they are queens, that they are strong to handle that every month.

For the other picture it was Louise who came to meet me because she knew that she was going to take action against period poverty, so she asked me to think of an image. I made her 8 proposals, I sent her a document with lots of different ideas and in particular the one of the crowns of tampons, because once again it made me laugh, I wanted to make fun of the fact that sanitary protection are so expensive that we end up seeing them as luxury products.

Solène: Is it you who approaches partners to implement your ideas or have you responded to requests from them?

Lisa Miquet: It depends, for the picture with Louise, as I said, it was Louise who came to meet me and I answered a request, but when it's personal series, I'm the one who come to meet people. This was the case for "Sang Bleu". It was me who organized a casting, who looked for a make-up artist, a hairdresser to set up this project.

Solène: Coming back to your image against period poverty, did you expect so much sharing?

Lisa Miquet: No, I didn't expect so much sharing, it was an image created in a very artisanal way, I created myself the crown with a glue gun, I shot in my living room, it was really a photo made with little means, I didn't expect the buzz.

Solène: You have also received criticism for this action, how did you experience it, how do you understand this criticism?

Lisa Miquet: I'm accustomed to criticism, when you create on the internet there are always people who have remarks to make, but this one was difficult. Indeed, often I get attacked by very extreme people who are not in agreement with feminism, here this was the first time I was attacked even by feminists who didn't recognize themselves in the project, so it was hard in the sense that I felt a bit "betrayed by my own side", I had to take it and hear it, but with hindsight I can understand the criticism. For example, the fact that the publication did not include enough trans people, that the sharing mechanism included visibility, I understand that… But it was not so much my photo that was criticized but rather the project. And I found it hard. We received criticism about the fact that Louise succeeds to get an agreement from “Nana”, who committed to give a box of sanitary protection to each sharing. And people made some criticism like "But Nana is a company that makes toxic products, not organic". I understand the problem, but at the same time, we are talking about women who are in very precarious situations, who have not enough protections so keep the same protection for a long time, creating infections, or worse, who use newspaper or other things like that as protection. Even if it is obviously essential to be careful and to take the most organic and eco-responsible protections as possible, Louise did the best she could. Certainly, it is imperfect, it could have been more organic protection, but I think that for women living in poverty, it is already a lot. It's as if we went to the “Restos du cœur” and criticized them for offering "sub-brand" products and not offering local and organic products. Once again, when we touch on subjects like feminism, we are expected to be irreproachable and perfect, and I find this is a form of integrated misogyny. Yes, we can do better, it's true, but we did what we could do. Now I expect people who have made this criticism to made actions too and try to apply their criticism, try to do better than we did. We, on our side, have collected 800 thousand packs of sanitary protection and it's already a very good result, I think.

Solène: Recently, a French government announcement was made about period poverty with the adoption of a measure aimed at female students. Do you think you played a role in this awareness?

Lisa Miquet: I don't know, I would find it pretentious to say yes. But it is true that it was really shared, it made it possible for people to talk about period poverty at several levels, in the public and private domains. For example, I saw a lot of young boys sharing the image and I thought it was great. If I contributed to it, I would be very proud of that, but for me the important thing is not to know if I played a role or not, the most important is that things are changing, that makes me happy.

Solène: Do you have a last word you would like to share right now?

Lisa Miquet: A big “Keep going” to all students. It can't be easy being a student right now with the health crisis so keep going!

To follow Lisa Miquet:

Instagram / Web site

PS : We all have to fight against period poverty. For that, UCA is about to install some dispensers to distribute free sanitary protection. The new machines will be installed in a few weeks. 

By Solène D'ARGY