Hôtesses d'accueil

In early 2021, I started a photographic project on receptionists and hostesses. In France, receptionists and hostesses are known under the name of “hôtesses d’accueil” and they are part of the same profession. Hostesses are a worldwide social phenomenon. Moreover, the way it is presented does not change much from one country to another: the female body is used for a decorative and representational role. In Paris, where I currently live, many young students go to work as hostesses to finance part of their university life. I was one of them and that is why I decided to talk about this social fact. Initially, I was interested in collecting life testimonies: I wanted to have different points of view about this profession. I managed to contact different women who were willing to tell me about their experience as hostesses. As I interviewed them, we mutually realized that many of them were employed to personify a type of woman. That is to say that in their work they were asked to embody another person who did not necessarily identify them. I chose to photograph the women I interviewed in two ways: first, as the hostesses they are asked to be, playing their role like actresses, and second, as they are in their daily lives, doing something that truly identifies them. Hostesses are in a constant theatrical performance: they are acting as the women they are asked to be. But the type of women they embody are merely cultural constructions belonging to different patriarchal imaginaries