The Vanishing
Book, soft cover, photomontage, prints on rhodoïde paper
14,8 x 21cm
2019
The Vanishing series exposes different ways of appearing while disappearing from view by confronting the archival document with a fragmented conditions of visibility. Deprived of their original context, the portrayed protagonists are no longer persons of proven historicity, but characters with ambiguous actions.
Le baigneur (The Bather), originally from "Coney Island, New York" shot by photographer Garry Winogrand becomes a strange beheaded man. SS general captured by photographer Lee Miler, found dead from suicide after the liberation of the camps, becomes a "sleeper". The famous crowd movements originally triggered by the May 68 rallies in the cities of Paris and Bordeaux in Les coureurs (The Runners) and La rencontre (The Encounter) echo Le danseur (The Dancer), symbol of the May 4, 1970 student protests at Kent State University in Ohio, where the police fired sixty-seven times in a few seconds in direction of the crowd, killing four and wounding nine.
Through this new status, which blurs the identification factors of the depicted scenes, what occupies these new characters are their hypothetical stories, made possible by the addition of a neutral background that doesn’t allow a scattered gaze.
Exhibition organized by the students of the Master Arts plastiques - Théorie et pratique of the Faculté des arts de l'Université de Strasbourg, under the direction of Chiara PALERMO and Frédéric CAILLARD, and with the support of ACCRA, the Faculté des Arts (Université de Strasbourg) and the IdEx of the Université de Strasbourg, as part of the Journées de l'Architecture 2018.
Exhibited artists : Jing Bai, Diana Ianakieva, Cynthia Montier, Yannick Tossing et Juliana Zepka.