BIOGRAPHY
Adeline Praud was born in 1979 in France. She studied art, sociology and communication. Before becoming an artist, Praud first pursued a career in the cultural field.
Her documentary work focuses largely on mental health issues, which she documents through the lens of the power dynamics and systemic violence with which they are connected.In 2019, she began documenting the opioid epidemic after living for 6 months as a volunteer in a halfway house in Vermont. Her project - A place I can call home - documents the struggle of communities and individuals fighting the epidemic and addiction. She received few scholarship to develop it.
Between 2013 and 2017, she was a member of the collective Bellavieza. Since then, she continues to train through multiple trainings and workshops: National School of Photography, Rencontres d'Arles, VU', Aperture N.Y.
In 2022/2023 she was invited to develop new work as part of an artist residency. Comme une branche de laquelle un oiseau s'est envolé (which you can translate as Like a branch from which a bird has flown) has just given rise to an exhibition and the publication of a book by the publisher Sur la Crête (June 2023). It was while developing this new project in a French psychiatric hospital that Praud understood her methodology. Always work with the people involved. Combine writing with photography. Confront several corpus of images to serve the documentary purpose and to leave free its creativity.
Praud has been leading workshops for photographers since 2016. She also teaches photography. In 2018, she founded L’œil parlant (which you can translate as The speaking eye), in order to design photographic projects aimed at risk communities, in a participatory approach to empowerment.