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Anne-Cécile Paredes: New goddesses. New gods

Photographer Anne-Cécile Paredes and the 6th 1 class from Anatole France college in Cadillac (Gironde) led the “New goddesses, new gods” project together. Each student imagined a corresponding god or goddess, embodying “his powers, his qualities and his weaknesses and his necessity”.

In this film produced by the OLA company, the student narrates what his god represents. We find gods in the right of inheritance of the Greek paragons such as Athlétus “God of sport” who “punishes the lazy, lights the Olympic flame” and who dreams of “beating Athena on the run”; gods specific to their times like Natura or Matigna, champions of ecological combat and the protection of the planet or Justicia and Spirale, who both fight against forms of injustice and wickedness by placing feminist struggles in their hearts; others still more sentimental, with love at first glance; those guardians of artistic temples, of drawing like scratching ropes; and then the craziest …

So this God of scum who like a promise erases shyness … this God of Time who has a lot against bad losers … this Goddess who “makes you sick so as not to go to work, to school, to college. She does people a favor to stay in bed and have fun ”. And perhaps the most essential of all, Fêtinha, the Goddess “who makes people party so they don’t get bored. […] Have fun, play and… dance. It has always been important ”. It could be the last word, if not a Republican motto to be struck on the fronts of our schools.

Beyond the apparent humor of the project, the portraits of Anne-Cécile Paredes feature an Olympus in homemade costumes. These portraits recall the games of childhood, when a piece of fabric and a meter of imagination were enough to embroider stories as long as the afternoon. These images simply show the extent of the imagination specific to adolescence. If certain Gods and Goddesses overlap, that certain concerns or powers emerge and intersect, there is finally in this elsewhere a God for everything. It emerges from habits – the one who does judo, the one who calms down with music – as ways of asserting oneself, of fading away, of forgetting oneself. They are small doors open to their intimacy, and even wider, to their worlds.

“New goddesses. New Gods ”
A project by photographer Anne-Cécile Paredes.
Photography: Anne-Cécile Paredes and Sophie Fougy
Radio piece: Johann Mazé
Production of the film: Compagnie Ola, 2021.

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