Mains d'oeuvre - Véronique Ellena

Mains d’œuvre* is a photographic series that explores the world of workers and
craftspeople in training. Véronique Ellena has always paid close attention to those
who are rarely seen, seeking to capture beauty where it is least expected.
For this series, the artist entered a vocational training center, the AFPA (in Bourg-en- Bresse, France), where she settled for a time and observed how objects and people are shaped together, within a kind of protected bubble still somewhat removed from the sometimes harsh reality of the working world.
In a context of profound societal change, these future workers carry both the memory of a fading past and the vitality of a new generation. Gestures are passed on and repeated; the workshops, though functional, are alive and inhabited; objects, made as part of the learning process, are used, then discarded or transformed. Colors are vivid and the light timeless. Trainees and instructors share a common guiding principle: the care to do things well.
In this world of seemingly raw simplicity, beauty emerges—highly poetic and
sometimes unexpected—revealing a richness and accuracy that might otherwise go
unnoticed. Mains d’œuvre reveals the very present and necessary nature of manual

labor and brings these workers into the light, as essential cogs in the workings of the world.
*Project supported by the Cnap – Centre national des arts plastiques (France), with
the Documentary Photography Grant; the Agence nationale pour la Formation
Professionnelle des Adultes in Bourg-en-Bresse, France; the City of Bourg-en-Bresse; and
Fujifilm.