No need to specify that Vichy is a city of water when one discovers the fluid and evanescent images of Sandra Rocha. In residence in the spa town, she was carried by the rural atmosphere of the squares and gardens, along the banks of the river and she recomposed on the way the visual poem of the girls in flower. Through her light-dazzled images, distant heiresses of the classical and idealist paintings of Puvis de Chavannes, she photographed the eternal summer of the young Vichyssis who gather the roses of life on the edge of the allier.

“On the banks of the Allier, the poses adopted by the models hesitate between the legacy of codes of femininity and the expression of a deep desire for singularity. Some young girls have put themselves in the water and remind us The fate of the models that the artists have sublimated in Baigneuses.The delicate architecture of the spa towns, with their shimmering casino galleries, forms the painted background of live paintings.The artist digs here a breach in time. A cage, the doors of which are wide open, but the beings which escape from it do not move away, the gala ornaments like the water of the river are a palace of mirrors where the reflections are lost.
Michel Poivert

This series of photos is on display at the Portrait (s) festival from June 16 to September 10, 2017. Since the 2014 edition, the Portrait (s) festival organized by the city of Vichy has been hosting a photographer in residence for a month. After Anton Renborg, Cédric Delsaux and Yusuf Sevinçli it was Sandra Rocha, a Portuguese photographer, who surveyed the spa town and made us discover the Vichy youth.