Anaïs Horn: Je suis malheureuse et heureuse Meta/Books, Amsterdam, 2020.

With original manuscripts by Anaïs Nin, diary fragments by Jackie Wang, and texts by Maren Lübbke-Tidow and Verena Walzl.

Designed by Alexander Nussbaumer, Fondazione Europa.

The photobook Je suis malheureuse et heureuse presents Austrian-born, Paris-based artist Anaïs Horn’s work on French author Anaïs Nin’s early diaries, the “Journal d’enfance”, written at the age of 16 in 1919–1920. In its first pages, Nin sets the tone, describing her discovery about her coming of age, her life between 11 and 18: “Je suis malheureuse et heureuse”. That is the core sentence and title of Horn’s project, consisting of intimate portraits of girls between 11–18, shot at her studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Exactly 100 years after Nin’s writings, Horn explores the magic and the problems of being a female teenager, the rites of passage, the timeless and the time-specific topics of female coming of age. 
Besides the portraits, the book includes stills from the video “La Boum”, which Horn developed with a 15-year-old dancer, original texts and manuscripts from Anaïs Nin’s journals, diary fragments from American poet and researcher Jackie Wang, and texts by Maren Lübbke-Tidow (DE) and Verena Walzl (AT). The book is designed by Fondazione (AT).

Je suis malheureuse et heureuse was shortlisted for the Photo-Text Book Award at the photo festival Les rencontres d’Arles 2021 and in the official selection of the Oslo Fotobokfestival.