I started “Anatomy of Desire” in 2008 after a traumatic personal event triggered a long period of insomnia, during which I explored and photographed the New York gay night scene and sex parties as a catharsis and a way to face my own dark side. Sometimes following my gay friends, but often wandering on my own, I exclusively used my Blackberry, at the time the first cell phone camera available in the US, way before the advent of Instagram and the proliferation of iPhone photography. I was fascinated by the way the low resolution of the camera created texture and gave the bodies a sculptural quality while at the same time blurring the contour of the human figure and reinforcing its dematerialization.
I like to use photography and video as a way to question our perception of the world and I see my images as a bridge between the world we live in and a more surreal and dreamlike dimension. Like metaphorical voyages or daydreams across time, space, memory and perception, narration and performance often intermingle through transformations of visual and temporal representations of reality. In the past few years, my approach has moved toward abstraction and the deconstruction of representation. I have also integrated the use of digital technology in my process as a way to explore the limits of the medium and blur the boundaries between photography, painting, performance and moving images.
Karine Laval
42
French living in Brooklyn, New York
