I believe in going to the limit, and I also believe in what happens beyond the limit in the no-man’s land between various forms of description. This no-man’s land for me, with no labels and codes attached to it, is a free space in the gap between photography and film, literature, painting, art and journalism. Do I trust it? I think it is in the making.
Like any place where you have that rub, there is a deep mystery. It has to do with human nature and why people construct each other as different, though they live side by side and often look alike as in the case of Palestinians and Israeli Jews. The mystery is as deep as the myth, and so for me the mystery is a central element of my quest.
As I move forward it became very evident to me that the construct of the ‘other’ beyond its traumatic consequences for both sides – beyond the violence, and beyond the hate – is also as a consequence of a paradigm of time, where time is like a vortex of repetition that literally eats lives and generations. I am forever trying to understand it, because this process of understanding does not have a defined end, even when you have the book done and the work on the wall.
At least for me, photography is about what happens between the moment of perception and the moment where you can put a word on that perception. So it functions in that space, and it deals with a whole category of ideas that are not yet defined and reduced by language. I could call them pure ideas, but it is more akin to unchartered territory.
Each day, L’Oeil de la Photographie will present to you a series by a photographer.
EXHIBITION
This place
From February 12 to June 5th, 2016
Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Pkwy
Brooklyn, NY 11238
United States
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org
http://www.this-place.org
http://www.magnumphotos.com/gillesperess
