After Lights Out
2013 - 2017
Night no longer exists. City lights cover up the stars, and cell phone screens lighten even the darkest of alleyways. And soon, imagine a world in which our lights render even the sun gratuitous. In the darkness of space, light is a beacon of hope. What if darkness in our world once again overtook the night and as an affect, transforming even the most insignificant light into an exception – a mystical phenomenon ? In a world in black and blue, the single incandescence of a bulb could be the greatest promise of an adventure about to start.
“One might say this is landscape work and entitle it “Variations on a Nightscape”. And that would miss the whole point. To be sure, when facing these locations, which have been shot deliberately from the front, in the twilight, centring them as accurately as possible in order to allow the space to breathe and so make it comprehensible to someone who has not experienced it and who is looking at it, this series of photographs produces landscape. But it is seeking something else. It is asking questions about today.
In each of these lived-in landscapes, for each of these rigorously situated buildings, a light is scouring the depths, a light that has not yet been turned off or that has already been lit.
This really is the “subject” of photography, its punctum, which denotes the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it. Asking about our relationship with light - and hence also photography. Telling of our hoped and fears, bringing out the fact that but for the existence of light the world would not exist before our eyes. And in each image instilling an enigmatic form.
Anxiety and the danger of shadows mixed in with safety and well-being”
Awards
2013 - Special Mention of the Jury - SFR Jeunes Talents Paris-Photo
Selected among 1026 entries by a jury composed of :
Julien Frydman, Director of Paris Photo, President of the Jury,
Christine Ollier, Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire,
François Saint Pierre, Director, Centre d'Art et Photographie, Festival de Lectoure,
Jean-François Dubos, President of the board, Vivendi and President of the Association des Amis de la Maison Européenne de la Photographie,
Olivier Metzger, photographer
Exhibitions
2017 - SOLO EXHIBITION - In The Gallery, Copenhagen
2016 - Fotofever, Paris
2016 - Galerie Intervalle , Paris
2015 - Sony World Photography Awards, Somerset House, London
2015 - Musée de la Photographie André Villers, Mougin, France
2014 - Fotofever Art Fair, Carrousel du Louvres, Paris
2014 - SOLO EXHIBITION - In The Gallery, Copenhagen
2013 - Paris-Photo Art Fair, Grand-Palais, Paris