Espejismo

The works by the Argentinian artist Alejandro Chaskielberg, (Juror's Pick by Martin Parr Award and Magnum Photography Awards), consist of powerful staged photographs made with a complex cinematographic lighting, during long exposures, in natural landscapes. Belonging to different series, this selection are visual metaphors in which focused and blurred coincide to subvert with mastery the meaning of the portrayed in captivating shots.

“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

“Chaskielberg uses very slow exposures on a large-format camera to dislocate the naturalism… in photographs of rural and landscape…carefully lighting and sharply focussing it, balancing and blending artificial and natural light sources… The resulting effect is a combination of focus and blur in effect reconfiguring the old pictorial.

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?

(Comisión artística para el Museo Nacional de Qatar (Qatar-Russia ’18 Culture Photographic Exchange.) El Medio Oriente concentra la historia ancestral el ser humano... Qatar fue inicialmente habitada en el tercer milenio antes de Cristo, y desde entonces, a pesar del ambiente desértico, su población ha cultivado, cosechado, pescado y construido... Al igual que en otras áreas del mundo, durante los últimos treinta años, Qatar ha disfrutado de algunas de las tasas de desarrollo económico más rápidas de toda la historia. Un pequeño puñado de nuevos multimillonarios ha florecido en las dunas de arena, mientras que la pobreza sigue siendo un devastador desafío mundial. El aspecto de las ciudades de Medio Oriente se ha transformado rápidamente, aunque sus territorios circundantes yacen igual que hace miles de años. Su infraestructura mejoró como lo hizo también su sistema educativo, con nuevas carreteras y vastos rascacielos de cristal de arquitectura imposible que aparecen en el horizonte como un espejismo. Parece que este conspicuo Neo-capitalismo no implica mucho trabajo físico para los qataríes contemporáneos, pues cientos de trabajadores han sido reclutados en el extranjero. Quizás, su pueblo aún bebe de sus antiguas tradiciones para crear una nueva identidad en una era pos neoliberal que está por escribirse en todo el mundo. En la búsqueda de una nueva tierra prometida, ¿cuál es ahora la promesa?