Produced in 2022 in California, “Le Murmure des Crépuscules” is the new series of images by Benjamin Juhel evoking the silence, the absence, and the long time offered by the night. In this project, he finds an approach to the interval between public space and private space, and questions the necessary distance of viewpoint between the city as a common space and individual habitat. Taken at nightfall, when the streets darken and the interiors light up, these images are a muffled wandering in a zone in transition. By maintaining a distance and a theatrical form, it offers a cinematographic and lively look at the urban territory. Each image offers a waiting situation and opens a narrative field to our imagination.
We find in this series the approach of penumbra and a singular vision of color, chiaroscuro and what light as a glow can give to perceive by taking the time to look. The plasticity of the images, always very pictorialist, close to drawing, the choice of a carbon fiber Japanese paper, continue to support the plastic approach of Benjamin Juhel’s photography, more inclined to make objects/images of fiction, poetic and remote from reality.
Benjamin Juhel uses the societal functions or images of cities to re-examine our relationship to representations, to the society of entertainment and consumption, and to the making of power. Without wanting to denounce it invites to question by creating poetic situations and images where the time of the night makes silence and loneliness exist. Benjamin Juhel offers images with textures and lights close to painting and cinematography. The darkness of the images invites contemplation, to take the time to discover what is given to see, leaving time for the gaze to grasp the details appearing when our eye gets used to the shades of black.
Benjamin Juhel : Le Murmure des Crépuscules
from April 12 to 28, 2023
Galleria Valeria Bella
Via San Damiano
20122 Milan. Italy
www.valeriabella.com
