Nathalie Boutté creates reinterpretations of 19th-century photographs through a meticulous cutting and pasting process. Reflecting back on existing imagery and referencing early photographers, Boutté’s collages are comprised of hundreds of Japanese paper strips assembled into feathery rows. Sometimes burned, shaded with ink or covered in typed letters, the paper’s tint accounts for the details in the image, while the subjects she chooses question the representational biases which persisted throughout photography’s long history of portraiture.
Boutté’s work has been presented in exhibitions at the Bellevue Arts Museum, WA; Lesher Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Domaine de Chamarande, France; Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne; Centre photographique – Pôle Image Haute-Normandie, Rouen and Museum Rijswijk, The Netherlands, among others. Boutté is the 2012 recipient of the Kristal Prize from the Salon de Montrouge, France.