The series “PERFORMANCES OF THE ORDINARY“, presenting self-portraits made in 1999, during a year, will be presented projected, as selected by the Voies OFF festival of Photography of Arles.
“Voies Off has been involved since 1996 in Arles in supporting young photography by presenting the work of the authors with the utmost rigor and offering artists an internationally renowned platform at the Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles. Between artistic demand, openness and concern for the exchange, the Voies Off Festival offers a rich program of evening screenings, exhibitions, portfolio reviews, professional mornings, and after-parties.”
1999-2000 – 14 Silver Gelatin Prints 20×20 cm
Goya was acquainted with demons and witches. You only have to look at his portrait of Charles IV and his degenerate family to burst out laughing at their majesties’ lamentably bloated faces. When an era ends, it disguises itself. Entertainment reaches the elite. The court’s photographers have a sense of entertainment, and contemporary entertainment
never ends. How amusing it is to remember that the specialist of the unconscious and inventor of the libido, had a nephew who had an amazing career launching modern advertising in the USA.
His name was Edward Bernays. Indeed, we needed such visionaries to drive the images of the past out of our minds, switching everything from Praxitelus to Picasso to packets of cigarettes, cars, movie stars and massacres. Images rove, where desires rove. But as the convulsions or agony of humanism were not accepted by everybody, everywhere, photographers were advised to dress top models as Samothrace’s Victory, businessmen as cultivated men, intellectuals as prophets, gin bottles as uncut diamonds, mineral water as fountains of youth, sportsmen as knights, actors as authors, alcoholic actresses as figures of destiny, the women as pearl necklaces…
and the world of images called luxery passes a little like top models, with their twisted feet, hollow cheeks, and amazing swaying walk.
Diane Ducruet uses photography for something else.
What she’s showing is evident, but from the other side of the mirror. Helmut Newton said that he photographed only appearances. He acknowledged his own self interest and used his fabulous talent for organizing light and shadow to announce his presence to the world to make us feel as he felt. His models let themselves be pulled into the adventure because they knew they would leave the usual path of their existence and be propelled into a game where seduction battles with obscenity.
A woman spends half of her life never forgetting she can be an object; society wants her that way. Diane’s photographs are not these types of self-portraits or even less a proof of technical competency. (…)
Milou – about Perfomances of the ordinary, 2003 – Translation Matthew Douglas-Kay
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