Hundred Portraits of Maydan
Representation of conflict and of the combatant; Functional focus on conflict; Media influences and preconceived ideas; Virtual, reality: confusion of genres? These are the categories into which a young man anxious about the state of the world classifies the works that have taken him from Colombia to Iraq and from Afghanistan to Syria. His hundred portraits of Maidan, in Kiev, form part of Regard sur la mémoire (Gaze on memory). Classical colour portraits, beautifully lit, with no air of spectacle, playing with the neutrality of the background that is repeated. The photographer asked each of his models, whose presence in the square was already a statement, to fill in a simple questionnaire: after their name they had to say what they would like to happen and what they thought was going to happen. In short, the opposite of descriptive journalism and also photojournalism bent on retaining moments, considered to be visually symbolic or graphically effective, as facts. The approach is not merely testimonial, capturing items of information gathered on the ground, but delves into and analyses the conditions of production and diffusion of the images, as well as the nature and commitment of the media.
