Ewelina Hanska was the correspondent, mistress and then wife of Honoré de Balzac. It was for her that he made this famous daguerreotypical portrait which shows him in a shirt. We know Balzac's theory on photography which would suggest that each portrait captured by the darkroom takes a spectrum: a thickness of appearance which would constitute our image like the multiple skins of an onion.
As Nadar recalls in his memoirs "So, according to Balzac, each body in nature is composed of a series of spectra, in layers superimposed to infinity, foliated in infinitesimal films, in all the senses in which optics perceive this body. (…) Each Daguerreian operation therefore came as a surprise, detaching and retaining by applying it one of the layers of the objected body. Hence for said body, and with each renewed operation, obvious loss of one of its specters, that is to say of a part of its constituent essence. »

The objects in the Mme Hanska poster series draw a “Chinese portrait” of the artist Aurélien Mole. They demonstrate his interest in specific objects that resonate with the present time. These objects are photographed against a neutral background lit by computer or tablet screens.
Here, it is an opium den headrest in the shape of a cat. A hole on the animal's rump allows it to be filled with hot water in order to increase the comfort of those who, lying down, follow the course of their smoky reveries. The cat has colonized our homes just as much as the Internet, it is one of the most commonly used memes.

There, a scale model of the Jamais contente, the first automobile to exceed the symbolic bar of 100 km/h on April 29, 1899. That day, we imagine it backfiring, speeding at incredible speed across the plain of Achères in Yvelines. Its shell shape definitively breaks with those of horse-drawn carts, associating the technological imagination of war with the first developments of the automobile. In truth, this new speed record was achieved in near silence: the Jamais contente being an electric car. A technology quickly supplanted by the internal combustion engine.

Finally, a Harley Benton brand electric guitar effects pedal. This is a delay, which allows the musician to create short loops of sound like an echo. The settings allow you to modulate the repetition speed, its volume and to control its attenuation over time. Using this effect forces the musician to play mirrored. Knowing that the sound will be immediately returned to him, he must create harmonies and dissonances whose stacking he must anticipate. In the context of music played live, delay introduces a short memory of past sounds that disrupts or enriches the present moment of the performance.

All these objects were found online and, consequently, left traces which are fragments of a portrait of the artist as a consumer. These fragments are compiled to draw a datas cloud of interests that allow certain brands to more precisely target the person to whom they seek to sell their product. We call “cookies” these pieces of code which allow us to track everyone’s navigations. In homage to Balzac, we could just as easily have called them “spectres”.

If we pay attention, we can see the presence of silhouettes under the poster, these are fragmentary counter-forms of the logos of these digital companies which lovingly collect our "spectres". Just as Ewelina Hanska preserved in the form of a daguerreotype, that of Honoré de Balzac.