These are the final days to see A corps perdu by Bruno Dayan at the Elephant Paname gallery in Paris. The exhibition offers viewers a journey into the sublime and the sensual, a journey to the heart of the feminine. The female body is the origin while the rest of the world is ordered in an extraordinary narrative in relationship to it , possessed by color, transcended by light, the body tells a mysterious and haunting tale.
Where does your photography come from?
B. Dayan : My photographs comes from the pictorial and cinematographic references amassed in my mind over the years. I remember reading through all of my older sister’s comic books before I even knew how to read. I imagine many people started out doing that, but I’m one of the few people who still deciphers the image without looking at the text!
Having studied both Fine Arts and Cinema in Montreal, I often found myself attending classes on art history and film on the same day, and in the evening I’d be in the Cinemathèque editing room watching films by Orson Welles or Stan Brakhage. I watched my favorite scenes of theirs on repeat. In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for me to watch four or five films in a day.
I like working on aesthetically “beautiful” photos where there’s still a feeling of something slightly mysterious and dramatic, as in the work of David Lynch and Caravaggio. I find that something is all the more beautiful when it is dark and ambiguous, even disturbing. I like to evoke the fears and anxieties that coexist in the pure and native world of childhood, as in fairy tales.
For this exhibition I chose to explore the irrationality and dark sides of dreams. At night, the limits between dreams and nightmares are not always clearly defined.
Bruno Dayan was born in London, England and raised in Montreal, Canada. He studied Fine Arts and Cinema at Concordia University in Montreal. Bruno’s photographic career began in Toronto where he shot for the main Canadian fashion magazines. After travelling to Asia, Bruno moved to Tokyo where he lived for 11 years. He started to shoot videos and commercials for top Japanese artists whilst continuing fashion Photography. In 1998 Dayan moved to France and created images for campaigns such as Celine, Chantal Thomass, Dior, Escada, Jaegger Lecoultre, Le Bon Marché, Le Printemps, L’Oréal, Louis Vuitton, Moschino, Omega, Yves St Laurent… His editorial collaborations include Numéro, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, Marie-Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Tatler, Flair, French, Amica, D la Repubblica… Bruno is now working between Paris and New-York in both film and print media.
Interview by Séverine Morel
REPRESENTATION
SERLIN ASSOCIATES
Paris-New York-London
www.serlinassociates.com
EXHIBITION
ELEPHANT PANAME
Until May 3, 2013
10 rue de Volney
75002 Paris
http://www.elephantpaname.com
