Espejismo

In 2014, he travelled with his one and a half year old daughter Lara to remote Patagonia, where he discovered the El Hoyo labyrinth. He was mesmerized: The labyrinth seemed to transform everyone who meandered through it. Children became elfin, adults became childlike. Everyone seemed under a spell as they made their way through the maze. Chaskielberg, a photographer who also works as a cinematographer, decided to put to use his cinematic experience to fully capture the magic of the labyrinth. Inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which famously concludes in a hedge maze, he took on the role of director. He created scenarios – he painted trees, used torches, moved people around, had them pretend to sleep on the ground and stretch out on the top of the hedges. In effect, he created a magical piece of land art that he then documented. Chaskielberg’s photographs visualize the feelings people experience while wandering through the giant maze. He created tableaus and made light visible. The images are spectacularly beautiful and seductive, showing us the transformation –and the fragility – of nature.

In 2014, he travelled with his one and a half year old daughter Lara to remote Patagonia, where he discovered the El Hoyo labyrinth. He was mesmerized: The labyrinth seemed to transform everyone who meandered through it. Children became elfin, adults became childlike. Everyone seemed under a spell as they made their way through the maze. Chaskielberg, a photographer who also works as a cinematographer, decided to put to use his cinematic experience to fully capture the magic of the labyrinth. Inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which famously concludes in a hedge maze, he took on the role of director. He created scenarios – he painted trees, used torches, moved people around, had them pretend to sleep on the ground and stretch out on the top of the hedges. In effect, he created a magical piece of land art that he then documented. Chaskielberg’s photographs visualize the feelings people experience while wandering through the giant maze. He created tableaus and made light visible. The images are spectacularly beautiful and seductive, showing us the transformation –and the fragility – of nature.

La Creciente series creates a wildly visual atmosphere, making us see that there is value in rethinking the techniques of photography as a mean to disrupt the all-too familiar patterns of visual thinking that inhabit wider social forms of representation. His aesthetics challenges the viewer’s perception of a subject and its meaning, which is what tends to be forgotten as a more critical aspect of the history of pictorialism”. David Bate. Art Photography. Tate Editions, London.

“After years of research, Edouatd Taufenbach was able to work with an exceptional collection of anonymous images that director Sébastien Lifshitz has been gathering over several decades… By selecting with obsessive care, coherent corpuses of rare snapshots of leisure, pleasure and desire; he multiplied these silver on gelatin plates to be then fragmented and manually rearranged, sometimes using different scales, in a composition stemming from a rule of mathematical nature [that refers both to digital and the beginning of the cinema]. The latter is specific to each one of the original images which, in a way, impose it. It points to, highlights and amplifies a formal or narrative aspect. The curves of a body here, a gesture there… Conversely it also allows the complete reinterpretation of the image, the invention of a new one: Who would suspect that this bouquet of feminine silhouettes comes from a horizontal image featuring a rather sensible farandole of bathers? In any case Édouard Taufenbach has worked with an open jubilation. —I inject cinema, time and rhythm to my images. The viewer is the one who operates the fi lm strip— he says”. Étienne Hatt, Curator

Spéculaire “After years of research, Edouatd Taufenbach was able to work with an exceptional collection of anonymous images that director Sébastien Lifshitz has been gathering over several decades… By selecting with obsessive care, coherent corpuses of rare snapshots of leisure, pleasure and desire; he multiplied these silver on gelatin plates to be then fragmented and manually rearranged, sometimes using different scales, in a composition stemming from a rule of mathematical nature [that refers both to digital and the beginning of the cinema]. The latter is specific to each one of the original images which, in a way, impose it. It points to, highlights and amplifies a formal or narrative aspect. The curves of a body here, a gesture there… Conversely it also allows the complete reinterpretation of the image, the invention of a new one: Who would suspect that this bouquet of feminine silhouettes comes from a horizontal image featuring a rather sensible farandole of bathers? In any case Édouard Taufenbach has worked with an open jubilation. —I inject cinema, time and rhythm to my images. The viewer is the one who operates the fi lm strip— he says”. Étienne Hatt, Curator

Spéculaire “After years of research, Edouatd Taufenbach was able to work with an exceptional collection of anonymous images that director Sébastien Lifshitz has been gathering over several decades… By selecting with obsessive care, coherent corpuses of rare snapshots of leisure, pleasure and desire; he multiplied these silver on gelatin plates to be then fragmented and manually rearranged, sometimes using different scales, in a composition stemming from a rule of mathematical nature [that refers both to digital and the beginning of the cinema]. The latter is specific to each one of the original images which, in a way, impose it. It points to, highlights and amplifies a formal or narrative aspect. The curves of a body here, a gesture there… Conversely it also allows the complete reinterpretation of the image, the invention of a new one: Who would suspect that this bouquet of feminine silhouettes comes from a horizontal image featuring a rather sensible farandole of bathers? In any case Édouard Taufenbach has worked with an open jubilation. —I inject cinema, time and rhythm to my images. The viewer is the one who operates the fi lm strip— he says”. Étienne Hatt, Curator

“After years of research, Edouatd Taufenbach was able to work with an exceptional collection of anonymous images that director Sébastien Lifshitz has been gathering over several decades… By selecting with obsessive care, coherent corpuses of rare snapshots of leisure, pleasure and desire; he multiplied these silver on gelatin plates to be then fragmented and manually rearranged, sometimes using different scales, in a composition stemming from a rule of mathematical nature [that refers both to digital and the beginning of the cinema]. The latter is specific to each one of the original images which, in a way, impose it. It points to, highlights and amplifies a formal or narrative aspect. The curves of a body here, a gesture there… Conversely it also allows the complete reinterpretation of the image, the invention of a new one: Who would suspect that this bouquet of feminine silhouettes comes from a horizontal image featuring a rather sensible farandole of bathers? In any case Édouard Taufenbach has worked with an open jubilation. —I inject cinema, time and rhythm to my images. The viewer is the one who operates the fi lm strip— he says”. Étienne Hatt, Curator

“After years of research, Edouatd Taufenbach was able to work with an exceptional collection of anonymous images that director Sébastien Lifshitz has been gathering over several decades… By selecting with obsessive care, coherent corpuses of rare snapshots of leisure, pleasure and desire; he multiplied these silver on gelatin plates to be then fragmented and manually rearranged, sometimes using different scales, in a composition stemming from a rule of mathematical nature [that refers both to digital and the beginning of the cinema]. The latter is specific to each one of the original images which, in a way, impose it. It points to, highlights and amplifies a formal or narrative aspect. The curves of a body here, a gesture there… Conversely it also allows the complete reinterpretation of the image, the invention of a new one: Who would suspect that this bouquet of feminine silhouettes comes from a horizontal image featuring a rather sensible farandole of bathers? In any case Édouard Taufenbach has worked with an open jubilation. —I inject cinema, time and rhythm to my images. The viewer is the one who operates the fi lm strip— he says”. Étienne Hatt, Curator

Spéculaire “After years of research, Edouatd Taufenbach was able to work with an exceptional collection of anonymous images that director Sébastien Lifshitz has been gathering over several decades… By selecting with obsessive care, coherent corpuses of rare snapshots of leisure, pleasure and desire; he multiplied these silver on gelatin plates to be then fragmented and manually rearranged, sometimes using different scales, in a composition stemming from a rule of mathematical nature [that refers both to digital and the beginning of the cinema]. The latter is specific to each one of the original images which, in a way, impose it. It points to, highlights and amplifies a formal or narrative aspect. The curves of a body here, a gesture there… Conversely it also allows the complete reinterpretation of the image, the invention of a new one: Who would suspect that this bouquet of feminine silhouettes comes from a horizontal image featuring a rather sensible farandole of bathers? In any case Édouard Taufenbach has worked with an open jubilation. —I inject cinema, time and rhythm to my images. The viewer is the one who operates the fi lm strip— he says”. Étienne Hatt, Curator

Spéculaire “After years of research, Edouatd Taufenbach was able to work with an exceptional collection of anonymous images that director Sébastien Lifshitz has been gathering over several decades… By selecting with obsessive care, coherent corpuses of rare snapshots of leisure, pleasure and desire; he multiplied these silver on gelatin plates to be then fragmented and manually rearranged, sometimes using different scales, in a composition stemming from a rule of mathematical nature [that refers both to digital and the beginning of the cinema]. The latter is specific to each one of the original images which, in a way, impose it. It points to, highlights and amplifies a formal or narrative aspect. The curves of a body here, a gesture there… Conversely it also allows the complete reinterpretation of the image, the invention of a new one: Who would suspect that this bouquet of feminine silhouettes comes from a horizontal image featuring a rather sensible farandole of bathers? In any case Édouard Taufenbach has worked with an open jubilation. —I inject cinema, time and rhythm to my images. The viewer is the one who operates the fi lm strip— he says”. Étienne Hatt, Curator

Following the most powerful earthquake ever to hit Japan, the sheer scale of the tsunami that smashed into northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011 –together with the nuclear disaster that came along with it -, was unprecedented. Coastal communities were devastated by waves, which at their highest reached 40 meters above sea level, traveling up to 10 km inland. This project presents a visual documentation of destruction and loss, by connecting portraits of the Otsuchi survivors with family photographs recovered from the waters, swept away by the tsunami. The survivors of Otsuchi were portrayed in the spaces where their former homes and workplaces were located. The importance of the colors becomes crucial in this approach. The colors from the destroyed photographs - deformed and blurred images, altered by the effects of the salty water, sometimes creating new colors or mixing the former ones - are revalued on an exercise of color archeology, where each of the colors found in the destroyed photographs were used to colorize the portraits of the survivors.

Following the most powerful earthquake ever to hit Japan, the sheer scale of the tsunami that smashed into northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011 –together with the nuclear disaster that came along with it -, was unprecedented. Coastal communities were devastated by waves, which at their highest reached 40 meters above sea level, traveling up to 10 km inland. This project presents a visual documentation of destruction and loss, by connecting portraits of the Otsuchi survivors with family photographs recovered from the waters, swept away by the tsunami. The survivors of Otsuchi were portrayed in the spaces where their former homes and workplaces were located. The importance of the colors becomes crucial in this approach. The colors from the destroyed photographs - deformed and blurred images, altered by the effects of the salty water, sometimes creating new colors or mixing the former ones - are revalued on an exercise of color archeology, where each of the colors found in the destroyed photographs were used to colorize the portraits of the survivors.

Following the most powerful earthquake ever to hit Japan, the sheer scale of the tsunami that smashed into northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011 –together with the nuclear disaster that came along with it -, was unprecedented. Coastal communities were devastated by waves, which at their highest reached 40 meters above sea level, traveling up to 10 km inland. This project presents a visual documentation of destruction and loss, by connecting portraits of the Otsuchi survivors with family photographs recovered from the waters, swept away by the tsunami. The survivors of Otsuchi were portrayed in the spaces where their former homes and workplaces were located. The importance of the colors becomes crucial in this approach. The colors from the destroyed photographs - deformed and blurred images, altered by the effects of the salty water, sometimes creating new colors or mixing the former ones - are revalued on an exercise of color archeology, where each of the colors found in the destroyed photographs were used to colorize the portraits of the survivors.

Following the most powerful earthquake ever to hit Japan, the sheer scale of the tsunami that smashed into northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011 –together with the nuclear disaster that came along with it -, was unprecedented. Coastal communities were devastated by waves, which at their highest reached 40 meters above sea level, traveling up to 10 km inland. This project presents a visual documentation of destruction and loss, by connecting portraits of the Otsuchi survivors with family photographs recovered from the waters, swept away by the tsunami. The survivors of Otsuchi were portrayed in the spaces where their former homes and workplaces were located. The importance of the colors becomes crucial in this approach. The colors from the destroyed photographs - deformed and blurred images, altered by the effects of the salty water, sometimes creating new colors or mixing the former ones - are revalued on an exercise of color archeology, where each of the colors found in the destroyed photographs were used to colorize the portraits of the survivors.

La Creciente series creates a wildly visual atmosphere, making us see that there is value in rethinking the techniques of photography as a mean to disrupt the all-too familiar patterns of visual thinking that inhabit wider social forms of representation. His aesthetics challenges the viewer’s perception of a subject and its meaning, which is what tends to be forgotten as a more critical aspect of the history of pictorialism”. David Bate. Art Photography. Tate Editions, London.

La Creciente series creates a wildly visual atmosphere, making us see that there is value in rethinking the techniques of photography as a mean to disrupt the all-too familiar patterns of visual thinking that inhabit wider social forms of representation. His aesthetics challenges the viewer’s perception of a subject and its meaning, which is what tends to be forgotten as a more critical aspect of the history of pictorialism”. David Bate. Art Photography. Tate Editions, London.

The Middle East concentrates our ancient human history… Qatar was populated in the third millennium B.C. and since then, despite the desert environment, its population has farmed, harvested, fished and built. Like other areas of the world, over the past thirty years, Qatar has enjoyed some of the fastest economic development rates from the entire history. A small handful of new billionaires flourish on the sand dunes while poverty remains as a challenge in the whole world. The appearance of Middle East cities has been transformed rapidly, yet the rest is exactly the same as thousands of years ago. Infrastructure improved as education did with new modern roads and vast crystal skyscrapers with imposible architecture appearing on the horizon like a mirage. It seems that this conspicuous new capitalism heave does not imply much physical labour for the contemporary Qataris, since workers were invited from abroad. Perhaps, though Qatari people drinks from their ancient traditions to create a new identity in a post Neo liberal era yet to be described worldwide. In the seek of a new promised land, what is now the promise?

Oasis (Commissioned by Qatar Museums | Qatar-Russia 2018 culture photographic exchange). Premiered in the Art Fairs circuit by ALMANAQUE Mexico City: 2019 The Middle East has an ancient human history. Qatar was populated in the 3rd -2nd millennium BC. Since then, despite the desert harsh environment, its population has farmed, harvested, fished and built. Like other areas of the world, over the past 30 years Qatar has enjoyed some of the fastest economic development rates of the entire history. New billionaires flourish in an eternally arid desert. The appearance of the cities was transformed rapidly, the rest is exactly the same as thousands of years ago, but infrastructure improved as did education, with new modern roads and vast crystal skyscrapers with imposible architecture standing on the sand like a mirage. Expensive cars, top services and state-of-the-art technologies. It seems that the new capitalist heaven does not imply physical labour for the Qataris, since workers were invited from abroad to perform physical labour. Qatari drink from their past traditions, values and lifestyle to create a new identity yet to be described.Leaving behind the stark desert, the XXI Century’s population is facing a reality thirsty of comfort and luxury. Will the people manage to retain their identity or will they fell in favor of an Occidental safe comfort? In the seek of the promised land, what is now the promised land?