Alissa is a documentary and collaborative project started with young autistic people supported in their daily lives by an IME
(medical-educational institute) from the North of France, as part of a residency with the CRP/Regional Center for Photography of Hauts- of
France. These young people, for the most part, have little or no access to speech, and their
disorder requires specific and adapted support.
The collective unconscious often associates autism with Asperger's syndrome, overrepresented in the media and cinema. This has the consequence of invisibilizing and marginalizing those who are never spoken about, those who more require the unfailing
support of their family and professionals, since they have fewer resources to understand the
world.
There are as many forms of autism as there are autistic people. But the young people we met all have a specific way of cutting themselves off from the world, from this world made of noises, images, olfactory and tactile stimulations, which break in and from which they try to protect themselves. The massive anxiety to which they are subjected is commensurate with the difficulty for them to construct an impermeable separation between the inside and the outside. To counter these anxieties, stereotypies and repetitions of movements or sounds come as an attempt at protection. The approach of these young people therefore requires tact and respect for this singularity, so that contact can be established that goes
beyond the barriers that separate them from others.
This is what we tried to do, by creating a space for meeting and creation, a fun space around images. Moments of painting workshops on images of the place were offered, individually, given their difficulty in being in a group. This roundabout way of entering into a relationship
with them made it possible to generate a series of images on which they intervened, highlighting that a meeting is possible with these young people. These images created together are accompanied by portraits taken on film, with a desire to leave room for surprise
and the unexpected of a possible encounter.