Elvis Presley continues to fascinate, the proof with the documentary photo report by Clémentine Schneidermann has traveled the world in search of his fans.

© Clementine Schneidermann

A fan who called her daughter Lisa Marie

Clémentine Schneidermann traveled the world in search of Elvis Presley fans. An offbeat and intriguing photographic project materializing in a book, I called her Lisa Marie. Clémentine Schneidermann met Liz, an Elvis Presley fan who called her daughter Lisa Marie, after the king’s daughter. From here, a photographic project was born, in search of a largely unknown counter-culture and which opens a window on an unsuspected world.
Between 2013 and 2018, she went for five consecutive years to the largest (self-proclaimed) festival dedicated to the American singer, in the small seaside town of Porthcawl located in South Wales. She also travels twice to the United States in Memphis, and thus mixes the photographs of Graceland and Elvis Presley Boulevard with British landscapes and characters. Clémentine Schneidermann’s encounters with characters inhabited by the figure of Elvis inspire this empathetic series. The American dream meets a United Kingdom in the middle of Brexit, the two continents are mixing. Nothing in the images specifies which side of the Atlantic we are on.

The sociological aspect of fans

“I am interested in the sociological aspect of fans. Especially when I went to see concerts, it was fascinating to see the dress code according to each artist. Fans talk a lot about the society we live in, culturally but also historically. ». Clémentine Schneidermann develops long-term photographic projects, taking an interest in new forms of social documentary photography. Navigating between staging and documentary photography, she is interested in communities and forgotten territories by magnifying the ordinary.