Lilou
Lilou, this is the story of an extraordinary big brother. Who doesn’t fit into the boxes.
Who is unconventional. Who doesn’t see the world like others do. Who doesn’t speak.
This big brother is mine. And this is our story”
“Lilou, this is the nickname we gave to my big brother Antoine. Like Luc Besson’s heroine in The Fifth Element, he is someone exceptional, living in a universe different from the others. » In his own reality.
Antoine is a 35-year-old autistic adult who lives in a medical center in Normandy, near Caen. He spoke a few words until he was four years old before completely locking himself into a world of silence. My brother’s body very quickly became a cage. He fights every day in this cerebral prison and seeks to communicate with us through objects: holding out his shoes suggests the desire to discover the world. The plate evokes hunger. The glass expresses thirst. My brother always needed to feel reassured. His well-being involves rituals in time and space: fixed times for getting up, for walking or for going to bed. He finds true peace when he is in contact with water and his happiness is palpable when he walks in nature.
To highlight him more for who he is, to tell his story, and to raise awareness of autism, I seek to express his means of expression, his feelings and his vision of the world. Photography becomes the instrumentalization of its language without words, a language based on images, sensations and emotions. Just like photography in a way.