Luc Delahaye

Biography

I have chosen to do my essay on Luc Delahaye. Luc Delahaye is a French photographer that focuses primarily on social issues, conflicts and world events. He is best renowned for his work beginning in the early 2000s. He is best known for his work having “disturbing and unreal” elements since a lot of his photography is controversial.

Luc Delahaye was born in 1962 in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France. Delahaye initially began as a photojournalist. He began his career in the mid – 1980s at the photo agency Sipa Press, dedicating himself to war reporting. He joined the Magnum Photos and Newsweek Magazine team before leaving Magnum in 2004. He reputed himself in countries such as; Rwanda, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Lebanon during the 1980s and 1990s with his war photography. Speaking on war he said “"In Beirut I discovered the beauty of war, the beauty of something that is deeply disturbing, but also a visual beauty that can't be found anywhere else -- it is totally unique," (http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/sullivan/sullivan4-10-03.asp).

“Delahaye's merging of art and documentary takes the viewer a world away from the often graphic horrors of war reportage, with its commonplace, usually tightly cropped, images of conflict situations”. (The Guardian)

He has won a number of awards including the Robert Capa Gold Medal and the Oskar Barnack Award back in 2000 for his work on the Winterreise photographs.

Delahaye’s photography was best known for its candid, direct recording of events and often times combined a touchy connectivity to news which includes a mental division in questioning his own being in his photographs. His notable photo books; Potrait/1 and L’autre highlight these thoughts that were later portrayed in these books. For instance Portrait/1 depicts portraits of homeless people and L’autre (The Other) are a string of stolen portraits taken in the Paris Subway.  In his book Winterreise published in 2000, the economic depression in Russia was explored.

Delahaye adopted a new focus in his photography in 2001 using large and medium format cameras and focused mainly on war scenes and global events. Some of his photographs are computer edited and produced in large sizes before being shown in museums.

In an interview with Artnet magazine in 2003, Delahaye is quoted saying: "Photojournalism is neither photography nor journalism. It has its function but it's not where I see myself: the press is for me just a means for photographing, for material – not for telling the truth."

Delahaye later announced that he was an artist and no longer a photojournalist the following year.

His photgraphs explore the boundaries between reality and the imaginary. They document immediate history,and impulse thought, "upon the relationships among art, history and information". (http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/delahaye/).

Work

In Delahaye's work the pictures work in a way that the big picture answers less that the questions asked about the progressive blurred line between art and reportage, and the sense of detachment that characterises contemporary photography. They also "question the relationship between the documentary value of photography and the museum as its proper context".

The work that I am going to focus on are his books L’autre, and Winterreise.

Delahaye’s book L’autre was published in 1999 and consists of black and white portraits of 90 unaware, everyday Parisian metro passengers taken between 1995 and 1997 and are framed in disparity of others in terms of investigation. This book is a “revealing investigation into the meaning of the human image and the relationship between the photographer and his subject.” (http://uk.phaidon.com/store/photography/lautre-9780714838427/).

Delahaye says he stole the portraits in this book because under French law people are is the owners of his or her image. Despite this, he also says that “our image is nothing more than a worthless alias of ourselves and it is everywhere without us knowing it”. The book is accompanied by a text from cultural theorist and psychologist Jean Baudrillard, philosopher whos work on Postmodernism, Marxism and contemporary culture have been highly influential internationally.

It is also, “a unique comment on closeness, distance and personal space in the urban realm, reflected upon further in the text by major French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard” (http://uk.phaidon.com/store/photography/lautre-9780714838427/)

“If you've ever feigned sleep on the Tube to avoid eye contact with other passengers, you will identify with the subjects of L'Autre ... it's a compelling book: the text alone will keep you coming back to it, and the fact that the Metro travellers refuse to look at you just makes you want to stare at them even more.” (Scene)

Delahaye’s use of  black and white full bleed shots portray the interior bleakness of everyday life distracted, preoccupied, people staring inwardly, anxious, faces that Baudrillard describes as "absent from their lives, raised to the tragic impersonal figuration of their destiny". An almost mute drama.

I thought the photographs in this book are both mysterious intriguing. It is obvious that Baudrillard belongs in this book in here in some sort of way, but his writing tends to demystify the mechanisms at work in Delahaye's work and moulds and forms the viewer’s opinion on how we see these photographs. I think that the images in the book needed to remain mysterious as Delahaye’s subjects.

Luc Delahaye’s book Winteresse is his road story as he travelled across the dark landscape of Russia in winter, being the melancholy storyteller that he is. In this book he takes an intimate look into Russia's private face of moral and social crisis. This book is basically the bridge between art and journalism. According to amazon the book is described as, “poetic - simultaneously terrifying, exciting, intimate, moving and very revealing”.  As they offer pleasures even through the depressing content of a nation falling to pieces, in winter, through alcohol and drug abuse. I thought the book’s attempt in making social and political statements about the sufferings he witnessed the Russians enduring during the industrialization following the Iron curtain fall. I think he succeeds in documenting in painful detail how people managed under the capitalist regime. 

Despite the truth of Delahaye’s subjects I found that some of the photos were hard to look at.

For instance the photo Taliban, I found was quite disturbing. Which is basically a portrait of a Taliban soldier lying dead in the middle of a ditch. He cause the controversy by combining reportage and art.  Although it highlights a truth I found that ethics were crossed here considering the fact that he was taking a picture of a real life dead person which I found slightly insensitive.

In and over mediated world, this photograph is Delahaye’s questioning of the role in reporting as well as question what happens to these images once they are removed from magazines or taken down from the walls in galleries.

Furthermore, I do think that some other reviewers make a valid point when they say that there are pits end of the lowest class in every society, and in the case of the Russians depicted in these photos, they are no more a great representation of Russia as a whole than Harlem denizens could represent all of New York.

Overall I do like Luc Delahaye’s work and I think that is probably one of the best photojournalists there is out there today. I also found that his images are compelling and thought and I can only admire his dedication to producing such images. I found that his books are well-produced book although I found most of his work extremely depressing. In my opinion his books well documented studies of poverty and abject misery as well as a depiction of cultural events. Looking through his work, you could only wonder what mental state he must have been after having spent so much time in an oppressively miserable environment considering that as a viewer you can only be disturbed by the images, forgetting that he is in the midst of these events.

Delahaye said in his 2003 Artnet interview that: "Reporters in the press see the Afghan landscape but they don't show it, they are not asked to. All my efforts have been to be as neutral as possible, and to take in as much as possible, and allow an image to return to the mystery of reality." I do agree that he does display this in his series although his approach to some of the situations I do find quite questionable.

I also do agree with the fact that the "mystery of reality" is what perfectly describes his photographs and it does have a certain sonority when it’s applied too images of war as he does.

References 

The Guardian

Amazon

Artnet.com

Metropolism.com

Getty.edu

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Teen fashion

My Photobook is based on teen fashion that is influenced by trends and culturally. In this book I have gathered several teenagers wearing the clothes they would wear to college, to go out or jet everyday wear. In my book you can see that all the teenagers had different tastes for example Judith who is on my cover who wears clothes that originates from her country but adds hers own western taste to it. Also in the book she models what we as teens would wear to an interview. But we also have other models that are more casual with their style and ones who take it a step further.

You can purchase the book here at:

http://blur.by/1rOM5dY

Photoshop Black and White

Exposure

1

4

2

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Beauty In The  Eye Of The Beholder

 

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". This is a quote that I've heard all my life. But now the question is whether my culture has affected my vision of beauty. Originating from Congo I have always been interested in different cultures and what was considered "beautiful" to each culture. In my country your weight counts for your beauty, if you are bigger in size, you are deemed "more attractive". Also skin colour is another element of beauty. The lighter your skin was the more beautiful you are. But growing up here in Ireland the definition is clearly different. Almost everything I've known to be ideal was the opposite here. What is considered "pretty" is tan skin and a slim physique. But this concept changes all the time due to media. What media portrays at a particular time represents beauty. 

My main objective for this project is to depict different cultures perspectives of beauty and to show the vast differences between them. I also want to include through photography how the idea of classic beauty has changed over the years and how certain cultures have entered into others. For example in the states, the curvaceous figure was ideal. When we think hourglass immediately we think Marilyn Monroe.Once high fashion from Europe entered the American culture, the slim figure became ideal. But now because of celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce and Kim Kardashian, the hourglass figure is slowly making its way back into mainstream media. Also the fact that now in Africa, Western features are more attractive. Women buy fake hair and put themselves through almost fatal procedures to lighten their skin in a bid to look like the average white woman or as close to it.

Before I embark this project I will be interviewing a list of people from different countries and ask them what is their idea of beauty, where it comes from, whether it has changed over the past few years and has it changed living here in Ireland. Ideally for this project I would like to take thirty females that are good representations of their country and have them dressed in their native clothing or what they consider to be the ideal woman's wear. The girls will have their photos taken by me in my house in front of a plain backdrop individually and all together at the end. The girls will have their makeup done by a friend of mine who is a professional makeup artist and be styled by a stylist friend of mine. I will be doing this project with a professional camera which will be lent to me by a friend. The project will be done over the course of five months, beginning in November 2013 and ending March 2014. My hopes for this project is to have at least one woman to represent each continent and work inwards moving into the different countries.

The project will be exhibited in book format in an exhibition. The photographs will be labelled with the country they represent and will be organized in alphabetical order. My goal is to highlight different ideas of beauty and how it has changed since the world has become more integrated with each other. I also want to explore whether there is such thing as a generic form of beauty and is there such a thing as the perfect woman, the one everyone finds beautiful, disregarding the culture in which they grew up in.

Love is in the air

Dirty Old Town

Street Art

Street Style

Halloween

Exhibition review

The photograph I have chosen to write about is the Panorama of Old Town with the Gates of Dawn. This photograph is currently being shown in the exhibition in Dublin's Gallery showcasing photographs of Kestutis Stoskus. I found the exhibition to be interesting because of how the photographer depicts architectural elements of Vilnus, almost creating a story with the lighting he uses as well as the shadows. I also found it interesting that he does not try to capture people in his photographs but more of the building and with lights, shadows and angles he creates a story making you want to ask more questions about a particular photograph

The reason I chose this particular picture was because of all the architectural elements in this photograph. I love how precise and intricate detail of the lighiting is in the photos are because it creates and almost magical land, which I would imagine to be only in movies. I also found it interesting that apart from the buildings there is almost a story being told here. Over at the front foreground there are people entering the building that is marked with a cross. This tells me that this is a misty cold Sunday morning also because of the fog in the background of the picture as well as the snow that fills the roofs of all these buildings.

I liked this photograph because of how almost unrealistic it looks although it looks almost reachable. The textures we see and the feelings we get from looking at this picture. I like how we can see the emotion and love the photographer has for this place by the top angle he uses and emphasis he uses on the buildings rather than the scenery which are kind of caught in the middle that creates more of a story. Over all I did like the exhibition. I found it was different and taught me more about the details of photography.