Instagram @sasha_mongin
Instagram @fisheyelemag
Sasha Mongin
FRANCE
Born in the United States in 1989. Her photography career began when, after graduating in Chinese language from INALCO in Paris, she moved to Shanghai and created her first series on the rise of the Chinese middle class. In 2021, she shifted her photographic practice towards a more artistic and personal approach, exploring the boundaries between reality and imagination. Fascinated by heroic, whimsical, or fragile characters, as well as by magic, colors, and flashes of light, she now focuses her work on an aesthetic that transcends reality. In 2023, she exhibited two series exploring masculinity at Galerie M, and then embarked on a project about grief with a series titled “The Dying Man Who Would Not Die”. Simultaneously, she undertakes commissioned work, constantly striving to infuse magic into her photographs.
Premi Fotografia Femenina 2024 InCadaqués x Fisheye Magazine
In Partnership with Fisheye Magazine
• SERIES •
The Dying Man Who Would Not Die
In a deeply personal series, photographer Sasha Mongin immerses us in the intimacy of her family history.
“My father contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in 1982 following heart surgery. AIDS allowed a rare virus to attack his brain, severely impairing his motor and speech abilities. I was 7 years old at the time, and the doctors gave him only a few months to live. But he proved them wrong, and he is still with us today.”
The images convey the perspective of a child who lived for years with the certainty that her father was about to die.
“I remember denying my father's illness, retreating into the illusion that he was secretly going out at night. I remember my mother's loneliness as our relatives, friends, and family gradually abandoned us. I remember feeling relieved that my father had AIDS and not a brain tumor, as I had been told until I was 12 years old. Death has always been a common topic in my daily life and that of my parents. They laugh about it, they cry about it, and they await it.”
While the subject is alternately treated in a metaphorical or very explicit manner, all the images are imbued with Sasha Mongin's dreamlike and fantastical universe, a way for her to illuminate the sadness of this story with the love that filled her childhood.
