Many discovered her at the Rencontres d’Arles, in 2022. Mika Sperling was one of the winners of the Louis Roederer Foundation Discovery Prize selected by photography historian Taous Dahmani. His series I didn’t do anything wrong won the People’s Choice Award. It is now the subject of a publication by Actes Sud.
“Ever since my firstborn was able to walk, a strong feeling of discomfort comes over me when I see her in the presence of old men. » It is often at the birth of their own children that adults return to their past, or see it resurface, without warning. It took Mika Sperling twenty years to face the shadow of her grandfather, the one who abused her for many years.
In the family album, she confines him to this shadow status, cutting out his silhouette to implicitly evoke the threat he may have represented and perhaps also remove him from her life forever. In the photos taken in the family setting, a young girl appears, sometimes smiling, sometimes reserved, alongside this taboo and cumbersome presence, “the elephant in the room” as she would be called across the Channel.
Some photographs are not revealed and presented from behind, simply described in words, full of meaning: “We are in our grandfather’s living room. He is sitting in his armchair and carrying two girls on his knees. I am one of them. Her right hand is on my hip, her left hand on the other girl’s chest. »
These family archives interact with more recent photographs that Mika Sperling took on the path linking her birthplace to that of her grandfather. Elusive shots that bring back memories. A baby appears on a few pages, who embodies the purity of childhood, the one that she saw disappear at a very young age but that her own daughter must preserve at all costs.
Between these images, a conversation takes place between the photographer and her grandfather, opening with the latter’s words “I did nothing wrong”. The culprit having died today, this scenario is imagined. It nonetheless remains an outlet and a door to healing.
Mika Sperling – I didn’t do anything wrong
November, 2024
21.00 x 29.70 cm
156 pages
ISBN : 978-2-330-19488-8
29.00€
Available online and in all good bookstores.
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