Elsa & Johanna

Breakfast in America, 2018

© Collection Société Générale

Chinook street, 2018

© Collection Société Générale

Friendly dresses, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Millarville, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

The True Life Story, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Cochrane, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Temptation, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

The Safe Way, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Failure, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Their Type of Things II, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Untitled, Forest, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Ending, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Between the lines, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Evening Cleaning, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Round and square, 2018

Courtesy of the artists and Galerie La Forest Divonne

Working at the interface of photography, performance and video, Elsa & Johanna have been creating visual and fictional narratives in which they are the main performers since they met in 2014. Through close observation of individuals and their interactions, they reproduce the attitudes, gestures and expressions of strangers in staged, transvestite portraits. These works of autofiction explore self-representation and the construction of identity

These fifteen photographs from the series Beyond the Shadows, photographed between 2018 and 2019 in Calgary, a city in southwestern Canada, tell a multitude of personal, social and poetic stories. The fashion styling, the choice of props, finding the locations and acting out the characters, was all part of the two artists’ work in constructing these stories that evoke familiar worlds through formulaic codes. From shopping scenes in the city to self-routine in the home, their photos reenact the ordinary though the fictional lives of anonymous people and, at the same time, question gender identities and the collective imagination.