Les Sabots de Vénus is a dramatic project inspired by the monumental architecture of the 1930s, exploring fascinating stories of controversial historical figures through an approach that plays with collective memory and the symbolic power of place. 

At the heart of this project is Magda Fontanges (born Madeleine Coraboeuf), an enigmatic figure in espionage who moved in influential circles of interwar diplomacy. A journalist and socialite, she engaged in relationships with several high-profile figures, including Benito Mussolini and Henri Lafont, head of the French Gestapo during the Occupation. Detained for collaboration, she took on an ambiguous role, providing information to the Nazis while maintaining contact with the Vichy government. Her singular trajectory—marked by shifting alliances and unpredictable actions—embodies a figure of influence, balancing manipulation and personal ambition in a complex, power-driven path.

 In a minimalist, frozen photographic setting, each character in this series, like Fontanges herself, hovers between personal identity and that imposed by the camera. Drawing on historical documents, the portraits capture this duality: faces, static and introspective, interwoven with symbols derived from an almost sculptural architecture. The scene becomes a theater where characters’ gestures, their repetitive tics, evoke the slow unraveling of idealism on the eve of war.

 Les Sabots de Vénus thus explores the concept of erased memory, where the history of places and symbols merges with that of the individuals who inhabited them—a past resurfacing into the present, crystallized within both scenic and photographic frames.