SERVE Nicolas

Ethanol

France

2020

Feeling that he was developing an addiction to alcohol, Nicolas Serve decided to enter a detox clinic in January 2019. He felt overwhelmed yet was fully aware of the place that this addiction – said to be of the most serious kind – had in his daily life. Photography would accompany him through this troubled period punctuated with withdrawal symptoms, treatments and encounters. “Ethanol” is a series of impressions, snapshots, more or less abstract shapes that translate a state of ambiguous transition between fragility and strength, shame and pride. Nicolas Serve chose to cement this slow and silent struggle with himself through images.

About the artist

Born in 1990, Nicolas Serve carried out a photographic investigation in 2014 into the resurgence of shanty towns in Île-de-France. This work signalled the start of an interest in the place that images hold in collective memory. He is the Director of photography for the media company Disclose. In his spare time, he works on documentary photography projects in the US and in Corsica, which are complemented with sound and video captures.