Influenced by both 19th-century “Pompier” painting and the aesthetics of 1990s–2000s R’n’B album covers, Elisabeth Gomes Barradas creates photographic montages and portraits of anonymous individuals and microcelebrities found online. Acting as photographer, stylist, and casting director, she stages her subjects as stars, exploring the seductive power of image, accessory, and pose.
 

Her work plays with the codes of fashion photography, tabloids, and classical portraiture, capturing the fragile confidence of figures embodying trends and subcultures from the street, media, and internet. Combining anthropology, art, and popular culture, she celebrates the inventiveness of pop and street aesthetics while questioning issues of gender, masculinity, race, and the intersections of art, music, and fashion.
 

Through iconographic research and carefully curated objects, her portraits recreate specific atmospheres. The use of analog photography and vintage references reflects both nostalgic fascination and a strategy to subvert commercial imagery—oscillating between homage and parody.
 

Text by Julie Ackermann for Documents d’Artistes Bretagne, BASE, January 7, 2022.