Virginie Rebetez

About this book

This is a conceptual work with a tragic underlying narrative: the disappearance of the teenager. The project tends to question our relationship towards absence and loss and the need of physicality in the process of acceptance and closure. The book combines materials from different sources, such as family archives, reproductions of police and psychic files as well as photographs by Virginie Rebetez. This two year project is also a a reflection on the medium of photography. The status of each image is constantly shifting, offering new meaning and context to this open case. Delphine Bedel, the editor and publisher, and Virginie Rebetez worked together 6 months on this publication, with great attention details and to the narrative structure of the book. The roles of images and their haptic qualities keep shifting, family archives and memories becomes first police evidence and later tactile objets for the mediums and the artist, a fragmented representation of reality, a transformation process that Delphine calls 'the haptic image'.