An Intimate Look at the Work of Karla Hiraldo Voleau
As part of our bimonthly feature on women in photography, writer, Sophie Gray, sat down with Karla Hiraldo Voleau, a French-Dominican photographer whose work seeks to explore complex and intimate realities; from love and interpersonal relationships, to abortion rights in the Dominican Republic. In this interview, Hiraldo Voleau discusses her projects in more detail and offers an in-depth perspective on what it means to be a working artist, sharing valuable insights into both the positives and challenges of the industry.
Doble Moral ©Karla Hiraldo Voleau
As a photographer, I’m always looking for new ways to be inspired; whether it be from film, or painting, or simple day-to-day interactions with people, ideas can come from anywhere at any time. I do, however, think there’s a misconception about artists that we need to be living in a constant state of creativity, churning out art at a rate that is just not possible to sustain without compromising on quality of work. I know I feel guilty whenever I haven’t picked up my camera in a long time, as if it’s somehow intrinsically linked to my worth as an artist, but it’s important that we are able to experience the things we wish to express through our art, lest it be a superficial projection of something real.
In November of 2024, in the midst of a creative block, I decided to book a last minute ticket to Paris Photo - an annual international photography art fair held at the renowned Grand Palais. The building itself is beautifully ornate, having recently completed its years-long renovation in time for the Paris Olympic Games; most notably unveiling the newly restored glass roof, which allows for copious natural light to flood the space. Upon entering the exhibition hall, I was met with a huge display of hundreds of black and white images by German photographer, August Sander. I had studied his work during my undergraduate degree, so to see his photographs up close was pretty incredible.
I made my way through the exhibit, taking my time so as not to miss anything, when tucked away in the upstairs gallery was Karla Hiraldo Voleau, a French-Dominican photographer who was exhibiting her project: Doble Moral, an investigation on abortion rights in the Dominican Republic. I was immediately struck by the rawness and authenticity emanating from her images. I quickly grabbed a card containing her details (one of only three from my entire visit) and later scrolled through her website hoping to find some of that inspiration I always seem to be looking for. Luckily, I was not disappointed. Her work is poignant, yet confronting, with the undeniable skill of someone who is well-practised in their craft.
I recently reached out to her in the hopes of getting to discuss some of her other projects on gender performance and partner intimacy, as well as her experience of being a woman in male-dominated spaces. Her insights reaffirmed the absolute need for more women's voices and stories in art, while also renewing in me a sense of desire and urgency to create, so maybe it’s about time I pick that camera back up.
Interview with Karla Hiraldo Voleau
Sophie Gray: I first discovered your work at Paris Photo in November of last year. Congratulations because that’s a massive achievement. How was that experience for you?
Karla Hiraldo Voleau: It was great and I’m obviously super grateful to have had the opportunity to have a solo in the emerging sector with my gallery, Christophe Guye, however, I don’t want to say that it was perfect and wonderful all of the time. I think it’s important to acknowledge the stress that this kind of event puts on an emerging artist specifically. I checked in with some colleagues after the fair, as I thought I was the only one to feel like this, but not at all. It was the highest and lowest I’ve ever been in my professional career. Every day I would arrive extremely stressed, or insecure because there’s just so much to do and so many things you feel like you could be doing better, but then you get super big highs because you can talk about your work and I had so many visitors telling me how the work resonated with them and thanking me for doing it. It was during Trump’s reelection, so lots of American women were really enraged by the situation and loved the work even more because of the abortion subject.
So, it was an interesting time, but I would do it again for sure. I don’t regret it. The art world has its way of making you feel like the shittiest person in the world and the best person in the world at the same time (laughs).
Sophie: Well, I have a question about that later, so I’ll save it for then, but yeah, there’s often a lot of hidden labour that comes with being an artist, so I can understand how that would be a big undertaking. So, I would like to know, where does your inspiration come from and how did you uncover your own sense of style?
Karla: It’s been since 2016 that I've been doing the type of work that I do today, so almost 10 years. I see all of the work that I’ve produced since then as a sort of Russian doll situation. Every project gives birth to a new project. There is a very consistent and deliberate, but also very organic, red thread, where one project will give me an idea for another project; whether it’s through the theme, or the process, or maybe just meeting people who will then inspire a new project.
I Have Nothing to Tell You ©Karla Hiraldo Voleau
Sophie: How do you maintain a consistent level of motivation for your photography?
Karla: Obviously I have highs and lows in terms of motivation, but I’m known for being quite organised, while at the same time, living in chaos. The chaotic part comes from the fact that I’m always travelling and that I haven't had a fixed home for a few years. I’ve been going from residency to residency, long term and short term, that I’ve either won or decided to create for myself. I don’t really have a recipe for how to deal with that, I just kind of take things day by day. At the same time, if you were to look at my calendar, it’s quite structured for the year ahead. I always have my year mapped out in terms of where I’m going to be and what residencies I’m trying to get, or where I want to work.
Sophie: A lot of your work deals with confronting gender stereotypes and this idea of performance; whether it’s performing gender, or intimacy, or perhaps just playing up different parts of ourselves for other people. Why is that so important for you to express through your photography?
Karla: Well, it comes from the very beginning. My first book and diploma project, Hola Mi Amol, talked about the dynamics of heterosexual couples in the Dominican Republic between foreign women and local Dominican men. Already there, it talked about gender and stereotypes attached to them, about performativity within romantic relationships, it talked about love, it talked about the female gaze, women looking at men and its implications, etc.
To put it simply, these are the themes that interested me. I’ve always been someone who wanted to talk about love stories, my love stories, other people’s love stories; this is what I like to consume in terms of books and films and art shows. I’ve always been obsessed with love stories, family stories, what drives an artist and the behind the scenes of everything. There’s infinite themes, but in the end what drives me to explore certain stories is a deep curiosity for people’s minds. Why does anyone do anything? I’m interested in the psychology behind certain actions and the stories that build entire lives.
Sophie: In your project: Another Love Story, you talk about feelings of intense love and the resulting heartbreak that came from finding out your partner was not who you thought they were. I’m sure a lot of us can relate to that. How has your photography helped you to overcome those difficult, and I’m assuming, quite painful experiences in your life?
Karla: There is a sense of art therapy in many of my projects and this one is a good example, where I find art to be a good place to be vulnerable. That’s also why I’m attracted to personal relationships, intimacy, and all of these themes because they are vulnerable places to go to. In this case, reenacting my failed and painful relationship with ‘X’ and turning it into a recovery project was a way of recovering my voice in the process of a brutal separation. It has been extremely empowering and liberating and the project allowed me to connect with so many women who went through the same type of emotional abuse.
The act of doing, for example, casting, styling, directing, and shooting the model who played ‘X’, felt like I was taking back control of the disastrous situation. It’s a very unsettling moment where you doubt yourself to the deepest corners of your soul, so to be able to reclaim my voice and re-perform my relationship how I intended it and how I thought I lived it was extremely empowering.
Another Love Story. Performing Intimacy ©Karla Hiraldo Voleau
Sophie: That makes a lot of sense. I feel like whenever I’m doing projects, I can never do something that isn’t personal, or that doesn’t have some element of my subjective experience in it. Even if I’m talking about something universal, I always have to do it from my perspective.
Karla: Totally. I think that these first-person projects come from a place of wanting to be really honest. On top of that, nobody can tell me, or you, when we do these types of projects that we’re wrong. They just have to take it in, if they’re interested — but the point is that there is no right or wrong in these narratives, which is very freeing.
Sophie: I notice for a lot of your projects, you’ve turned them into photo books, which seems to be your preferred medium for showcasing your work. Can you talk a little bit about the process of turning your projects into a book and why you have chosen this method over others?
Karla: That’s partly only a reflex that I have from school and using Indesign, honestly. That’s something that’s ingrained in me, to edit in double pages when I’m on the computer, but as well, I go towards that because of the narrative aspect of my work. Since I work with text all the time, it makes sense to turn stories into books.
I always say there are two types of artists: the ones who think and then do and the ones who do and then think. I’m definitely in the second category. I’m going to do or live something, do a series of actions, photographs, writings, shoot, shoot, shoot, and then I’m going to lay everything on the ground in front of me and think about the deeper meanings of this collection, to connect the dots.
Sophie: I’m fascinated by your project: A Man in Public Space, where you dress up in typically male clothing and seek to move through the world as a man would. How did that experience change your perception of gender, or potentially what it means to be a woman?
Karla: In this project, my biggest fear is to generalise the experience of a cis man, or a cis woman, so I put a big emphasis on the fact that I didn’t transform into a random guy because that would be too general. I transformed into my alter ego, Karlos, and I took inspiration from the people around me, so my dad, my half-brother, my friends. I took clothes from them, I had my dad’s jeans, I copied the beard of my brother, I tried to pull from my own surroundings to create this alter ego. It was also really important that it was shot in a short time period and specific locations that meant a lot to me. I did one week in Lausanne and then years later one week in Paris.
This was another example of doing and then thinking about it. It came from the fact that I was having countless conversations with my girlfriends about how we would love to be a man sometimes in the street, to avoid street harassment and to feel more free. I wanted to really question this fantasy that we had as women regarding this transgression and how it would really influence our personality and our behaviour in an urban context.
A Man in Public Space. Performative Photography ©Karla Hiraldo Voleau
Sophie: Did it change something for you, or do you think it reaffirmed the beliefs that you already had?
Karla: It was a good way for me to practically understand social constructs. I could actually channel into whatever side of masculine or feminine I have and it’s up to me to navigate through all of the possibilities of people that I can be. Feeling free, liberated, and careless in the public space shouldn’t belong to a specific gender. It has more to do with impositions and social etiquettes and constraints.
Sophie: In a more general sense, what has been your experience of being a woman in this industry? Have you come up against any obstacles and if so, how have you overcome them?
Karla: I’ve been quite lucky because in Switzerland, which is where my main network is, there is particular attention paid to giving opportunities and grants or support to women. I’m also surrounded by a lot of women artists, so I very rarely feel like the only woman in the room. Equally, I work with a lot of women curators and women in culture, in museums, institutions, fairs, festivals — it’s full of women actually, and happily so. Therefore, I’ve felt quite a big sense of sorority and the more the years pass, the more I’ve felt this attention being paid to supporting and showcasing women’s work.
One thing I will say is that the heads of museums and institutions, of big prizes or publishing houses, are still majoritively men. There, I’ve felt some condescension and a bit of slut-shaming because of the nature of my work, with Hola Mi Amol and Another Love Story where I show a lot of my body and I talk about my sexuality, my intimacy, my love life. So I’ve definitely felt slut-shamed at times and had some sneaky comments from the men in my industry. I want to talk about that with a friend, maybe make it into a mini podcast or something: the common slut-shaming in this industry.
Sophie: How important do you think it is that we continue to give voice to people who have been largely under, or even misrepresented in society?
Karla: I think that’s why art exists, no? To tell all the perspectives, to showcase all types of stories and dynamics between people, so very important, central. That’s my only goal actually.
Sophie: Well that’s what I think too, but I also think sometimes with art, it can be quite…
Karla: Pretentious and superficial?
Sophie: Yeah and elitist and the stories that end up surviving are not necessarily representative of all people.
Karla: I understand and am a fan of conceptual art, minimalism, all of these non-narrative types of art, that really focus on the form and the concept of what they’re doing. For example, the White on White painting by Kazimir Malevich, I understand that’s a fundamental piece, however, I’m not interested in that anymore, definitely not. I think storytelling in art is needed now more than ever. The personal is political, the intimate is political and for me, in this time of ‘fake news’, media propaganda, manipulation online, terribly controlled algorithms, a really simple way to fight back against that is to tell your own story truthfully.
Hola Mi Amol ©Karla Hiraldo Voleau
Sophie: What are you currently working on? Anything in the pipeline?
Karla: Right now, I’m working on different projects, but the main one is Frammenti, which means fragments in Italian. It’s a project with a sociological approach, where I aim to go to every region of Italy and collaborate with high schools and Gen Z students who I interview on their views of dating, romantic relationships, feminism, femicides - the many femicides that are happening in Italy - and their hopes for the future. I’m referencing Pasolini’s documentary from 1964 called Comizi d’Amore, which means investigation on sexuality, where he went with his microphone to interview all types of people, all gender, all social class, all ages through the whole of Italy and by asking very intimate and personal questions, he made a beautiful, radical, and political portrait of the society back then and that’s what I’m taking inspiration from. I’m moving into my fifth region now.
Sophie: Amazing! I’m excited to see how that turns out. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me, I really appreciate it.
Doble Moral ©Karla Hiraldo Voleau
I think Karla touched on something really fundamental about art, which is that when done from a place of sincerity, it has the capacity to connect people and enables us to see the world from a different point of view. In this current political climate, where division and hatred is so readily encouraged, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the power we hold as a collective. I truly believe in the small, everyday acts of resistance for being the catalyst to bigger and more profound change; that sometimes the most meaningful thing we can do is to not close ourselves off to the world around us.
I wanted to start this column as a way of not only highlighting the amazing work that women are doing in this space, but to also create a sense of community, where we can feel safe to share our thoughts and experiences on difficult subject matters. It’s impossible to ignore the increasing vitriol that’s being targeted towards women and can at times seem like we’re moving in the wrong direction, so when the opportunity presented itself, it felt like the perfect time to open up these conversations in the hopes that it will resonate with anyone who needs to hear it.
Instagram: @karla.voleau
Website: Karla Hiraldo Voleau
