Photographs made in collaboration with Martin Gallone.
With the wish of questioning the intersection between the fight against patriarchy and the struggle for Kurdish independence, Laura Lafon embarks on a roadtrip to document love in Eastern Turkey.
But Laura isn’t traveling alone. She’s accompanied by a lover, the photographer Martin Gallone, with whom she forms a duo that attracts both eyes and questions. Their improvised couple thus gives rise to a dialogue and a photographic game. What does the fantasy of the free Western couple represent? How does the Kurdish youth view and experience love in their own context? This photographic roadtrip mix their self-portraits with stagings of young Kurds. Questioning masculinity, sex, desire, these images underline the political dimension of intimacy. Both tragic and funny, You could even die for not being a real couple is an autofiction on the social constructions of love and the cultural contexts of its representation.
Shmorévaz is an independent space dedicated to art and research. Opened in 2021 in a vacant old shoe store, it is activated through exhibitions, performances, reading or listening sessions and conversations. "Shmo" — as some call it — supports hybrid, experimental practices, which often take the form of publications or works questioning affects, the body and sexuality.