Céline Bodin’s evocative body of work, The Hunt, is an introspective exploration into the enigmatic symbolism and historical significance of women's hairstyles in Western cultural history. At once poetic and analytical, this project investigates how hair becomes more than an aesthetic gesture—it transforms into a vessel for identity, ritual, societal conformity, and silent rebellion. Moving far beyond the decorative, Bodin uses the language of form and visual minimalism to interrogate the layered narratives embedded in strands and silhouettes.
With a visual structure reminiscent of an intimate lexicon, The Hunt reads like a modern-day reliquary. It reflects upon centuries of female representation, cultural constructs, and the performative aspects of beauty. Hairstyles, often seen merely as personal grooming or style, are recast here as timeless artifacts—indexical signs of femininity, constraint, aspiration, and transformation. Each image invites the viewer to contemplate not only the visible patterns but also the invisible ideologies they echo. Bodin positions hair as a transformative medium, oscillating between mysticism and corporeality, tenderness and control.
Conceptual Foundations: Reconstructing Femininity Through the Lens of Hair
The conceptual core of The Hunt lies in Céline Bodin’s desire to interrogate the elusive, often mythologized architecture of femininity. Her creative journey didn’t begin with visual styling or fashion trends but rather from an introspective and philosophical place. She was captivated by the way femininity is imagined, performed, and ritualized across historical contexts, and more specifically, how this identity is materially and symbolically constructed.
A foundational influence for Bodin was the intellectual dialogue found in Le Féminin et le Sacré, an exchange of philosophical essays between Julia Kristeva and Catherine Clément. This profound text delves into the metaphysical dimensions of womanhood, tracing its symbolic evolution through spiritual traditions, myth, and psychoanalysis. Within it, hair emerges as a recurring motif—an emblem of bodily sanctity and corporeal allure, simultaneously revered and regulated.
Hair’s significance is not merely aesthetic. As a living part of the body that can be altered or removed, it exists in a liminal space—both intrinsic and separable, biological and cultural. In religious traditions, it has been sacrificed as penance, offered in devotion, hidden to preserve modesty, or flaunted to signal vitality. Bodin identifies this paradox and uses it as the thematic thread that weaves through the entirety of her work. In her view, hair holds contradictory values: it can denote submission or defiance, spiritual discipline or unruly sensuality. It is at once domestic and wild, sacred and carnal.
In The Hunt, she engages this duality with subtlety and poetic clarity, presenting hair not as an accessory to identity but as its primary vessel. Each image becomes an embodiment of inherited archetypes—a silent testimony to how hair has long operated as a coded language of gender, class, and morality. Through this framework, Bodin resists simplified narratives and instead invites her audience into a contemplative space, where beauty is not fixed but fluid, and identity is not given but perpetually reinterpreted.
Her approach evokes the complexity of historical femininity without reducing it to nostalgic reenactment. It opens the possibility of reconfiguring the feminine, not through overt confrontation, but through re-encoding its subtle signs. The viewer is never told what to think. Rather, they are offered visual riddles—images rich with tension, memory, and ambiguity—encouraging a more layered, introspective engagement with what it means to be seen, classified, and remembered.
Creating a Mythology of Styles: From Personal Fascination to Cultural Reverberation
Rather than cataloging historical accuracy, Bodin’s selection of hairstyles is deeply affective. Her approach is not that of an archivist bound by chronology, but of a visual storyteller guided by personal resonance and intuitive connection. In this sense, The Hunt functions less like a traditional encyclopedia and more like a mythological map, where each hairstyle is a symbolic node within a broader constellation of cultural imagination.
Bodin curates from various temporal layers. She draws inspiration from distinct historical periods—the ornamented sophistication of Victorian coiffure, the rebellious angularity of the 1920s bob, the buoyant theatricality of the 1960s beehive, and the confrontational rawness of 1970s punk. These styles are not presented as mere fashions but as coded expressions of social and emotional states—each imbued with historical weight and psychological nuance.
These archetypes are set alongside imagined or culturally charged personae: echoes of Queen Elizabeth I’s sovereign assertiveness, Marilyn Monroe’s vulnerable sensuality, Josephine Baker’s exuberant defiance, and the ambiguous seduction of Nabokov’s Lolita. Through this deliberate amalgamation of real and fictional references, Bodin builds an immersive visual mythology that transcends the constraints of time or geography.
This curated ambiguity also destabilizes the viewer’s expectations. There’s no singular narrative or direct reference point. Instead, each image gestures toward collective memory and personal fantasy, allowing the hairstyles to become interfaces between the viewer’s inner world and cultural residue. What might first appear as a straightforward aesthetic becomes, upon closer inspection, a palimpsest of desire, discipline, ritual, and identity.
Through this kaleidoscopic layering, Bodin weaves together high art, vernacular traditions, cinematic motifs, and even literary memory. Her work resists fixed meaning and instead celebrates the plurality of femininity—its capacity to be both intimately personal and deeply social. Each image becomes a portrait not of a person, but of a cultural moment, emotional state, or ancestral echo.
Hair as a Ritual Object: Embodiment, Control, and Social Transmission
Hair has long been used as a marker of belonging, belief, and propriety. In The Hunt, it is stripped of its casual familiarity and reinstated as a potent relic—a living medium through which ideologies, rituals, and power relations are inscribed. This repositioning aligns with historical traditions where hair was treated not merely as adornment but as a sacred symbol or social signal.
In various cultures, the act of grooming hair has been an initiation into adulthood, a gesture of mourning, a ritual of purification, or an assertion of seduction. The effort placed into arranging, styling, or removing it signifies both personal and collective discipline. In Bodin’s work, these traditions find contemporary expression: some styles appear painstakingly constructed, stiff with artifice and intent; others are loose, chaotic, and raw, suggesting emotional vulnerability or nonconformity.
Hair’s flexibility allows it to reflect a spectrum of internal states and social positions. It can be militaristic or romantic, minimal or decadent. It speaks of labor—the hours spent curling, braiding, or smoothing—and of resistance, when left wild or shaved altogether. Bodin’s framing of these variations elevates hair as a visual language that communicates far beyond the surface.
Moreover, hair carries with it an uncanny quality. It grows silently, continues after death, and can be preserved long after its owner is gone. This strange persistence makes it an especially intimate relic. By focusing on the back of the head and removing the face entirely, Bodin transforms each subject into a near-anonymous vessel for this symbolic material. The viewer is denied direct recognition and is instead asked to interpret the semiotics of the hairstyle.
In doing so, Bodin highlights the tension between individuality and type. The subjects in The Hunt become archetypes—not in the reductive sense, but as elevated forms of collective memory. They are everywoman and no one at once, allowing their hair to carry the weight of inherited narratives while resisting the simplification of identity into stereotype.
Hair as Collective Memory: Evoking Mourning, Ritual, and Emotional Resonance
Hair, in its uncanny materiality, becomes a proxy for memory. It is one of the few parts of the human body that remains long after death—once separated, still identifiably human. In Victorian mourning culture, this quality made it an ideal medium for keepsakes. Locks of hair were braided, preserved in lockets, or woven into intricate medallions and framed as talismans of remembrance. Bodin resurrects this tradition, not through imitation, but through conceptual parallel.
Each print in The Hunt is small and square, precisely 14.5 x 14.5 cm—mirroring the size of antique reliquaries or intimate portraits designed for close observation. This scale invites a sense of reverence, urging the viewer to engage slowly, to study the contours and textures with care. There is no monumentalism here—only intimacy, tenderness, and the quiet authority of presence.
Through this material approach, Bodin connects The Hunt to a broader lineage of memorial art. Her work does not mourn a specific person but rather the multiplicity of feminine experiences, many of which have gone undocumented, unnamed, or misunderstood. Hair, in this context, becomes a stand-in for the silenced voice, the muted history, the invisible labor behind the construction of gender.
At the same time, there is a celebration in this act of preservation. These images suggest not just absence, but endurance. They affirm the presence of women whose identities were defined, judged, and remembered through their outward appearance. By isolating and elevating these hairstyles, Bodin gives permanence to something otherwise fleeting—offering a new way to commemorate the nuanced interplay of beauty, power, and tradition.
Towards an Expanding Archive: Future Directions in Bodin’s Feminine Inquiry
The Hunt is not an endpoint but part of a larger continuum in Bodin’s artistic exploration. Her visual inquiry into the artifacts of femininity—first through hair, and now progressing into garments—suggests an ongoing commitment to reinterpreting the coded languages that structure identity. Just as hairstyles function as signals of time, status, and emotion, so too do clothes. They are rituals we wear, performative layers we put on each day to situate ourselves within or apart from social constructs.
In her forthcoming project, Bodin remains loyal to the typological method but deepens her engagement with analog processes, turning to the darkroom as a site of material experimentation. The same quiet tactility that defines The Hunt will find new expressions through fabric, drapery, and silhouette—inviting further meditation on how aesthetics mold the feminine form.
The continuity between these projects affirms Bodin’s broader artistic ethos: a belief that the smallest details—hair, dress, gesture—are not trivial but central to our understanding of gendered existence. Her work is not just a reflection of culture; it is a reclamation of it, one strand and thread at a time.
Material Significance: Hair as a Living Symbol of Identity and Control
In The Hunt, Céline Bodin elevates hair from mere styling detail to an emblematic form—an artifact of bodily language and cultural inscription. Her nuanced treatment of hair underscores its unusual nature: it is both intimately personal and outwardly displayed, both mutable and biologically continuous. Unlike fabric or cosmetic enhancement, hair springs from the body itself, bridging the divide between self and society in an unusually direct and tactile way.
This quality makes hair a powerful medium for examining identity. It is a substance that we grow, shape, shed, and even offer. It carries the essence of our biological rhythm while being subject to relentless aesthetic intervention. It becomes, therefore, a repository for internal experience and external expectation—a site where private subjectivity meets public scrutiny.
In The Hunt, this intersection is laid bare. Hair is shown not as background, but as central narrative. It is depicted as labor, ornament, rebellion, and uniform. It speaks of rituals passed down through generations: from childhood grooming rituals to ceremonial braiding, from head-shaving in grief to the veiling mandated by doctrine. Bodin’s compositions preserve this ritualistic quality, infusing each portrait with a sacred stillness, a sculptural poise.
Her work interrogates the paradox of autonomy versus submission. Some of the styles suggest regimentation—a mastery of form and precision—while others signal nonchalance or deliberate transgression. Through this spectrum, hair reflects one’s position in society, one’s alignment or dissonance with beauty norms, one’s negotiation with control—both exercised and endured.
Hair, in Bodin’s treatment, is more than a visual marker—it is a sociopolitical terrain. She transforms it into a stratified symbol that carries coded messages: of class, of piety, of sexual availability, of defiance. It is simultaneously an aesthetic and an ideological frontier, and within this contradiction lies its enduring power.
Disrupting Stereotypes: The Hair Archetype as Social Taxonomy
A defining feature of The Hunt is its deliberate erasure of individuality through the consistent absence of the face. This artistic decision forces the eye to settle upon what is usually secondary in portraiture—the back of the head. Through this inversion, Bodin subverts the traditional mechanics of portraiture, displacing identity from the face to the hairstyle. In doing so, she exposes how visual society constructs and confines women within aesthetic archetypes.
Historically, hair has functioned as a semiotic device—a set of visual codes used to determine a woman’s moral standing, sexuality, and social role. Whether long and loose, intricately styled, or tightly bound, hairstyles have often served as shorthand for interpreting femininity through the lens of patriarchal or institutional values. In Bodin’s world, these codes are laid bare, yet presented in a manner that neither romanticizes nor condemns. She offers them as specimens in a taxonomy, inviting scrutiny.
The series’ title, The Hunt, evokes more than aesthetic pursuit—it suggests entrapment, objectification, and the urge to define. By presenting each portrait as a silent trophy, she critiques the cultural obsession with capturing and preserving types of womanhood. These types—often shaped by fashion, class aspiration, or religious custom—are revealed as constructs rather than truths. The faces may be hidden, but the cultural scripting is unmistakable.
Yet Bodin’s critique is never unidirectional. She leaves space for multiplicity, acknowledging that even within constraint, there exists transformation. The same hairstyle can suggest both compliance and resistance, both preservation and evolution. Hair, after all, is inherently performative. It is the costume we cannot take off but which we can endlessly reshape. Through repetition and variation, Bodin emphasizes this duality: the rigidity of classification and the subversive possibilities within those confines.
Her portraits resist singular interpretation, embracing instead the ambiguity of visual language. Each becomes an artifact of societal taxonomy, where identity is traced, measured, and managed—yet also a mirror, reflecting back the viewer’s own catalogue of assumptions, biases, and remembered symbols.
The Ritual of Maintenance: Labor, Devotion, and the Invisible Act
In analyzing the significance of hair, one must also consider the rituals of care that surround it—rituals that are rarely seen but deeply felt. Within The Hunt, these acts of grooming are alluded to through the final form of each style, suggesting hours of intimate effort, repetitive gestures, and inherited traditions. Behind each intricate braid or sculptural updo is an invisible choreography of hands, time, and devotion.
Hair maintenance is often gendered labor—usually feminine, often maternal, occasionally communal. It is taught, observed, and passed down like an unspoken language. This maintenance is not simply about aesthetics—it is about discipline, about readiness for the gaze, about participating in or resisting cultural expectations. Bodin captures this dynamic not through action, but through implication. Each polished hairstyle reveals a history of effort, a web of meaning that stretches far beyond the frame.
These rituals, however, are rarely neutral. They are influenced by forces of class, race, religion, and generational memory. The act of straightening, curling, covering, or cutting is never purely personal—it is entangled with politics and pressure. Bodin's choice to omit the face underscores this reality. It suggests that while the individual might be veiled, the labor and expectation carried by the hairstyle remain starkly visible.
In this way, Bodin’s portraits speak as much about what is done to hair as what is done with it. The labor behind beauty is laid bare—not in an exposé, but in a quiet, respectful recognition of its weight. Hair is shown as both burden and expression, both self-care and self-censorship.
This complex portrayal of maintenance introduces a seldom-discussed dimension to conversations about femininity: that of unseen work, of time invested, of identity curated through repetition and ritual. It adds depth to Bodin’s exploration, enriching The Hunt with layers of unspoken toil and sacred repetition.
Hair as Resistance and Reclamation: The Politics of Visibility
While much of The Hunt centers on the codified meanings of hairstyles, there is also a strong undercurrent of defiance—an acknowledgement of hair’s potential to disrupt, unsettle, and liberate. In a world where conformity is often rewarded, the choice to wear hair against the grain becomes an act of political expression.
Historically, certain hairstyles have been deployed as statements of non-compliance. From the buzz cut adopted by activists to the refusal to chemically straighten textured hair, these gestures have served as declarations of autonomy. In Bodin’s series, these visual refusals are presented side by side with more traditionally ornate styles, without hierarchy. This flattening suggests that both resistance and adherence contain equal complexity and deserve equal reflection.
Even within traditionally accepted forms, there are subtle rebellions. A twist left imperfect, a curl allowed to spring free, a braid that suggests both control and chaos—all hint at individuality pressing against standardized ideals. These nuances are central to Bodin’s aesthetic, where even the most composed forms seem to breathe with quiet tension.
What emerges is not a binary of conformity versus rebellion, but a spectrum. Each hairstyle becomes a site where power is negotiated—between visibility and invisibility, tradition and innovation, self-definition and societal pressure. In this context, hair is not simply styled but staged—a deliberate performance of selfhood in a world saturated with expectations.
Bodin’s vision is one of reclamation. By removing the face and focusing exclusively on hair, she reorients the gaze. She compels the viewer to reckon with what hair can mean rather than just how it appears. It is an invitation to re-examine inherited interpretations, to notice the choices embedded in every twist, part, or wave.
In this quiet defiance, The Hunt becomes a testament to hair’s capacity not only to communicate but to contest. It transforms hair from object into subject, from adornment into argument.
Embodied Memory: Hair as Archive, Echo, and Ancestral Thread
Bodin’s series culminates in a haunting recognition: that hair, more than any other part of the body, endures. It exists before, during, and after. It is carried from one generation to the next—not only through DNA, but through ritual, storytelling, and collective remembrance. In this way, The Hunt can be read as a visual archive of inherited memory, where each image serves as a whisper of the past speaking into the present.
Just as early societies preserved hair in amulets or tokens, Bodin treats her portraits as relics. Each compact print, intimate in scale, evokes the reverence of a sacred object—an item not just to be viewed but held, pondered. This reverential framing suggests that hair, while ephemeral in its daily expression, carries a timeless essence. It is both a vessel of past lives and a signal to future ones.
These portraits are not just of women—they are of archetypes, lineages, echoes. They recall mothers and daughters, saints and rebels, queens and commoners. They collapse temporal distinctions, allowing the viewer to witness the evolution of identity as told through form. The viewer doesn’t simply see the past—they feel its residue.
In these works, Bodin extends beyond individual biography to a collective memoryscape. Hair becomes a fiber that weaves through time, binding generations with silent continuity. The Hunt invites the viewer to reflect on their own rituals, their own inherited codes, their own contributions to the visual language of femininity.
It is through this delicate interplay of form and symbolism that Bodin’s work finds its fullest expression. In reframing hair as history, as ideology, as labor and liberation, she restores its rightful place as a deeply personal yet profoundly political artifact—one that tells the stories we often fail to speak aloud.
Aesthetic Dialogue: Echoes of Antiquity in Modern Form
While The Hunt emerges from a contemporary visual language, its soul is undeniably tethered to classical aesthetics. Céline Bodin draws upon a timeless artistic lineage, steeped in the iconography of antiquity, where form is not merely decorative but declarative. The influence of Greco-Roman sculpture is subtly but powerfully infused into each frame—evident in the stoic posture of her subjects, the restrained elegance of their presence, and the intentional silencing of the gaze.
Bodin treats the hairstyle much like an ancient sculptor would have treated marble: with reverence for shape, detail, and symbolic resonance. The disembodied nature of classical busts—often bereft of arms, movement, or animation—has clear parallels in her portraits. These classical figures were frozen in time, elevated to icons of virtue, intellect, or nobility. Similarly, Bodin’s subjects are fixed in stillness, their backs turned, their expressions unknown, their identity distilled into silhouette and structure.
What makes this aesthetic decision profound is its commentary on permanence. While the classical bust aimed to immortalize an individual’s legacy, The Hunt attempts to crystallize the ephemeral—moments of self-styling, gestures of femininity, fleeting ideals of beauty. Yet these modern relics, like their ancient predecessors, become timeless through their abstraction. Their anonymity allows them to exist outside of a single life or era, taking on a broader symbolic role within the collective imagination.
This subtle, sculptural gravitas also serves to elevate what is often dismissed as superficial. In Bodin’s hands, hair becomes worthy of the same contemplation traditionally reserved for mythological subjects and historical heroes. Through a synthesis of classical form and contemporary nuance, The Hunt bridges epochs, blending the material and metaphorical to probe the deeper resonance of aesthetic ritual.
The Quiet Drama of Interior Influence
Céline Bodin’s artistic influences do not solely rest on ancient forms. Her approach is also deeply informed by the hushed, interior sensibility of painters like Vilhelm Hammershøi, whose compositions depict domestic stillness and muted narratives. Hammershøi’s figures—often turned away, alone, or lost in silent reflection—share a kinship with Bodin’s visual world, where stillness is not stagnation but a space for introspection and ambiguity.
In Bodin’s hands, silence becomes an instrument of expression. The absence of the subject’s face does not rob the viewer of emotional engagement; it intensifies it. This compositional restraint draws the gaze toward subtlety: the curve of a neck, the texture of hair, the weight of a braid. These details, often overlooked in conventional portraiture, become the central language of communication.
This visual withholding creates a suspended narrative—one that is suggestive rather than explicit. Each figure is simultaneously present and elusive, offering just enough for the viewer to construct their own projection. This act of filling in the gaps turns passive observation into active contemplation. The photograph no longer depicts a person; it becomes a mirror for memory, a canvas for subjective interpretation.
The tension between visibility and invisibility becomes a thematic motif. The body is there, but the self is veiled. The figure is formed, but the story is fragmented. It is within this dialectic that Bodin’s work gains its unique power. She does not dictate meaning but orchestrates a space where meaning must be assembled, felt, and sometimes even invented by the viewer.
This restrained drama reinforces the timeless quality of the work. There is no trendiness in The Hunt, no reliance on spectacle. Instead, there is an almost monastic focus on the essential—form, memory, stillness, and symbol. It is this commitment to emotional minimalism that imbues the work with such lasting resonance.
Constructed Intimacy: Viewing Distance and Emotional Proximity
One of the most compelling technical decisions Bodin makes in The Hunt is the consistent sizing of each image. Printed in a compact 14.5 x 14.5 cm format, these portraits evoke the scale of relics, lockets, or daguerreotypes—objects that invite closeness and demand quietude. This intentional intimacy contrasts with the dominant trends of monumental scale and high-definition spectacle, making her work feel precious, almost devotional.
This physical smallness reshapes the viewer’s engagement with the work. To appreciate the intricate detail of a hairstyle or the delicate interplay of shadow and light, one must approach the image slowly and attentively. The experience becomes almost tactile, as though the act of looking is itself a ritual. This slow gaze fosters a sense of connection that large-scale works often sacrifice in pursuit of grandeur.
But this format does more than just foster intimacy; it references historical practices of remembrance and sentiment. In the 19th century, it was common to carry portraits and keepsakes of loved ones—photographs, hair locks, or painted miniatures—objects designed for private engagement rather than public display. By echoing this scale, Bodin aligns The Hunt with traditions of mourning, memory, and spiritual reflection.
This delicate framing underscores her broader concern with the rituals that sustain personal and collective identity. Just as hair is a site of private meaning and social display, so too are these images artifacts of emotional and cultural transmission. They are not loud proclamations; they are whispered confidences, requiring the viewer to slow down, lean in, and reflect.
Through this subtle manipulation of scale and detail, Bodin transforms the viewing experience into a meditative act. Her portraits don’t merely show—they invite. They don’t announce—they recall. And in doing so, they reinstate a kind of sacredness to the image, treating it not as a commodity but as a vessel for memory and meaning.
The Relic and the Trace: Hair as Temporal Artifact
At the heart of The Hunt lies the notion of the relic—an object that outlives its original context and accrues meaning through its endurance. In religious and cultural traditions, relics are remnants that carry the aura of the sacred, the weight of what once was. Hair, with its unique ability to endure after death, becomes a natural candidate for such symbolism. It is a trace of the living body, a token of presence in the absence of life.
Bodin seizes upon this symbolism to craft a modern reliquary—one not housed in gold but printed on paper, one that doesn’t display saints or martyrs but anonymous figures of constructed femininity. The hair becomes the relic, the photograph becomes the vessel, and the viewer becomes the witness. The parallels to Victorian mourning practices are unmistakable, yet Bodin reconfigures these associations into a broader meditation on time, loss, and continuity.
Each portrait is a container for emotional sediment. The styles may reference different eras, but they are stripped of direct historical context. There are no period costumes, no props, no settings—only the hair, floating in a void of grey. This decontextualization allows the work to operate outside linear time, creating a continuum where past and present, myth and memory, coexist.
Through this approach, Bodin reclaims the hair medallion tradition from sentimentality and reframes it as a universal symbol of persistence. Her work asks what we carry from the past—what visual languages, what inherited rituals, what silent expectations. The hair is not just remembered—it is reactivated, repurposed, made present once again.
The reliquary is not nostalgic. It is not a longing for what has been lost but a way of articulating what still lingers. In The Hunt, the past is not a place behind us, but a texture beneath us—a root system from which modern identity continues to grow.
Memory Without Faces: The Universal Language of Absence
Perhaps the most radical choice Bodin makes in The Hunt is the erasure of the face. This absence does not represent a lack—it represents a strategy. By turning her subjects away from the camera, she removes the most immediate vehicle of identity and emotion. What remains is the back of the head, a hairstyle, a nape, a posture. This visual reduction does not diminish presence—it amplifies it.
This technique draws from a lineage of artists who use anonymity to evoke universality. Yet Bodin’s approach feels uniquely intimate, as if the absence of the face frees the subject from performative self-presentation. Without a face to read, viewers are forced to look elsewhere—to the fall of the hair, the choice of style, the energy of form. The image becomes less about recognition and more about resonance.
This anonymity creates a democratizing effect. These figures could be anyone—your grandmother, a stranger in a painting, a character from a novel, or even a projection of yourself. This malleability allows the portraits to exist as open texts, shaped by the viewer’s memory, culture, and emotional framework.
In removing the specificity of the individual, Bodin reveals something more elemental: the inherited languages of beauty, discipline, and identity we carry unconsciously. The hairstyles become symbolic thresholds—markers of belonging, ritual, aspiration, and transformation. They are faces turned inward, identities seen through gesture rather than gaze.
Through this strategy, The Hunt becomes an atlas of silent expression. It charts not landscapes or nations, but postures and symbols, residual emotions and ancestral codes. The absence of the face becomes the very space where meaning gathers—quietly, slowly, profoundly.
Veiling the Self: Anonymity as Method and Message
An essential characteristic of The Hunt is the strategic anonymity of its subjects. By turning the models away from the camera, Bodin strips away the immediacy of facial recognition and individual narrative. What remains is a universal form—an invitation for projection and interpretation.
This visual anonymity serves multiple purposes. It subverts the traditional dynamics of portraiture, challenges the viewer’s assumptions, and opens a conceptual space for collective identification. Viewers are not confronted with a specific individual but are instead prompted to engage with the archetype—the idea encoded within the hairstyle.
This approach also mirrors Bodin’s broader artistic method, where identity is often explored through absence, blur, or abstraction. In The Hunt, she avoids the gaze and instead focuses on the contours of selfhood as expressed through external forms. The result is a poetic negotiation between the personal and the symbolic, the private and the public.
Evolving the Narrative: Bodin’s Future Exploration of Aesthetic Identity
Bodin’s artistic trajectory continues beyond hair into the broader realm of aesthetic codes and cultural identity. Her upcoming project delves into garments as markers of gender, class, and visual language—another typological exploration that builds on the foundation laid by The Hunt.
Staying true to her methodology, she plans to maintain the typological structure and tactile intimacy, while using analog processes and darkroom techniques to imbue her images with physical depth. This continuation suggests that Bodin’s work remains committed to uncovering the hidden histories and silent structures embedded in everyday aesthetics.
Her vision remains clear: to dismantle the visual systems that have historically shaped and limited female identity, while simultaneously reimagining them as fluid, expansive, and resonant.
Final Reflections:
In The Hunt, Céline Bodin invites us into a nuanced conversation where hair transcends its commonplace role to emerge as a complex, multilayered archive of identity, memory, and ideology. Through the subtle language of form, texture, and absence, she constructs a powerful visual lexicon that asks viewers not just to look—but to remember, question, and reinterpret.
This series stands out not simply for its aesthetic cohesion or historical resonance, but for its ability to make silence eloquent. By turning her subjects away from the camera, Bodin withholds the direct narrative, allowing viewers to project their own myths, associations, and biases onto each hairstyle. This anonymity becomes a mirror—reflecting societal archetypes and personal assumptions alike. Hair, in this context, operates not as a superficial ornament but as a profound emblem of transformation, discipline, desire, and resistance.
Bodin’s work also resonates as a subtle critique of the ways in which women's appearances have historically been codified and controlled. By isolating hair and presenting it as an almost sculptural form, she challenges the viewer to confront the silent violence of typification—the tendency to reduce individuality into categories of type, class, or beauty. Yet, at the same time, The Hunt celebrates the inherent theatricality and plasticity of these forms. The same hairstyle that signals oppression in one context may serve as a shield or declaration of autonomy in another.
What elevates The Hunt beyond visual documentation is its philosophical inquiry into what we preserve and why. Hair becomes a relic, a ritual, a record—carrying with it echoes of love, loss, societal expectation, and intimate memory. It bridges time, touching the Victorian mourning traditions as well as contemporary questions about gendered aesthetics and personal agency.
Ultimately, The Hunt is not just about hair—it’s about how we construct meaning from the material world. Through Bodin’s lens, we are reminded that every detail we wear, hide, or alter speaks volumes. In her quiet, reverent approach, she creates a lasting testament to the stories we carry not on our faces, but in the unseen weight of form, history, and the body’s enduring symbolism.
