Léger, though, is well aware of this, and Exposition is in many ways a homage to the person behind the reputation, irrespective of whom she may have taken as her lover. The danger would thus be to become too fascinated with the many popular narratives surrounding Castiglione and forget about the woman herself. Castiglione was, after all, a highly significant and well-known figure in the French salons of the latter half of the nineteenth century: famous for her beauty, she was for some time a mistress of Emperor Napoleon III. Amanda DeMarco’s vibrant translation, if a little overfaithful to the original French at times, successfully renders Léger’s intensely visual style, capturing her trains of thought and many digressions with precision and flair.Īny book describing the life of the Countess of Castiglione, whether non-fiction, fiction or the curious mix of the two that it is here, is constantly vulnerable to the risk of relaying gossip. As the constant return to the story of the author’s mother illustrates, the ‘strong emotional charge’ of an object can be one of unexpected, or buried, connections.Specifically, the narrator (a half-fictional version of Léger herself) is fascinated by the visits Castiglione made to be photographed in the same Paris studio over four decades – turbulent years which saw her reach the height of power and influence and ultimately the very depths of isolation and poverty.

The original interview is here.) Of the astonishing object sometimes found in the archive, ‘if it contains information, it also contains a strong emotional charge…To speak that part of the real, to give it thanks and undo its hold, there is only literature’. (These are my translations of Léger’s responses. In a 2014 interview, in the French journal La Cause du Désir, Léger describes the archive as ‘a field of interpretation’ and therefore also ‘one of the favourite places of fiction’. What is perhaps more notable is the way in which Léger sees the archive as a literary space. Léger is the Director of the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine (Institute for Contemporary Publishing Archives), so it is unsurprising that archives and the figure of the archive should feature in her work. Exposition, Suite for Barbara Loden, and The White Dress are literary works of research.

Nathalie leger exposition