“The artist’s book Mon Bijou deals with the specific interaction of fashion, economy and spatial structure in the Paris of today. In one of the back courts of the august boulevard of Paris—the narrow and winding streets of the Sentier, or ‘footpaths’ (as Sentier translates into English), Susanne Huth became the witness of another economy in the shadows—to some extent an economy in the shadows—of a specifically local circulation of production, consumption and recycling, taking place between fabric suppliers, small tailors and shops.
Around the Place du Caire, Suzanne Huth filmed and photographed the busy activity of the North African day laborers who transport packages back and forth on handcarts, and gradually become the witness of a daily ritual: in the evening, boxes with leftover fabrics, buttons, silk flowers, ribbons, belt buckles and all kinds of small trinkets are left in front of the entrances of the shops, and rummaged through by the postmodern descendants of the Baudelairian rag picker, looking for reusable items, before the refuse collection cleans the street for the next day.
The artist didn’t only limit herself to recording this; she also participated in this local ‘small’ economy, which, in view of the international clothing industry, appears almost nostalgic. She gathered her own spoils from the boxes, and put together a collection: a ‘basse culture’, a fashion from ‘below’. Susanne Huth presents this in her artist’s book Mon Bijou, where she also assumes the role of model. The poses and the affluent, theatrical setting are in fact only borrowed, but also stand for a kind of self-assertiveness against the expensive gloss of haute couture.” -Suzanne Holschbach
