The silence subtly disappeared sometime in mid-January 2019, following a traumatic event that occurred one year before. Since then, white noise, scintillating sounds, and other dysfunctional frequencies have been with me every moment of every day, like impalpable symbols of trauma, superimposed. This self-portrait, shot in Super 8 film, illustrates the sensory chaos provoked by permanent tinnitus. I have had to tame this ‘phantom pain’, like perpetually surging sound waves, to define a new state of silence.
Sarah Seené is a French photographer and filmmaker based in Montréal (Quebec, Canada) who works with 35mm film, Super 8 and Polaroid. Born in the East of France in 1987, she obtained a Bachelor's degree in Lettres et Littératures Modernes at the Faculté de Sciences du langage de Besançon and a Master's degree in Recherches cinématographiques at the Faculté de Lettres et Langues de Poitiers. Her thesis was on the concept of idiocy in the Golden Heart Trilogy by filmmaker Lars Von Trier.
Seené taught herself analogue photography at 16 years of age, when she began using a communal dark room near her home. Over a number of years, she has developed an aesthetic rooted in the documentary genre and characterized by a unique sensibility and poetry that addresses intimacy and what it is to be human.
Her photography has been exhibited and projected in several solo and group exhibitions internationally, such as at the Voix-off festival (France), Revela-T (Spain), Présences Photographies (France), Biennale de photographie en Condroz (Belgium), and Atoll artist-run centre (Canada). Her short films have been screened at many international festivals, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival (United States), the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma - FNC (Canada), the Engauge Experimental Film Festival (United States), Videoex (Switzerland), Ultracinema (Mexico), and Analogica (Italy).
