The Catherine and André Hug Gallery showcases Philippe Chancel’s series Drive Thru until June 18th. Started in 2005, the Datazone project addresses places that are recurrent in the news or which are, on the contrary, practically almost never under the media radar. This long-term project, currently nearing completion (2017), charts a constellation of fourteen emblematic zones scattered around the globe.
Flint, Michigan, is the eleventh cardinal point of the Datazone constellation. Neighboring Detroit, currently abandoned to a disastrous de-industrialization, the city was once the stronghold of General Motors, main employer and creator of the cult object of the American happiness. If the 40s saw the Buick Roadmaster or Slylark become stars of the Hollywood’s silver screen, the Riviera, Gran Sport, or Wildcatmodels were television action hero’s best companions, cars embodied family happiness in the American Dream. Fulfilling the American Dream also meant ownership of a Dream House. An utopian ideal, founded on the access to individual housing rather than city building – the guarantee of social peace and economic development: building houses, filling them with all sorts of appliances, and reaching them by car.
But Flint is now bloodless. In approach, Philippe Chancel accomplishes the crossing to Walter Evans’ photography’s graphic and temporal lines. Then, in his own way, the photographer dives into the abandoned neighborhoods, enters neglected houses, and lays his eyes on hidden lives – before the brutal wake up to the state of emergency – declared by Barack Obama in 2016, for deadly lead pollution in water supplies, a nefarious consequence of the factories’ grounding.
In a context of great insecurity, Philippe Chancel “samples the real.” His action is about being there, in the present moment of human catastrophy; it’s about letting oneself be flooded by reality, about waiting patiently for photographs to take shape, without ever filtering anything, but instead work by cutting. Every trace inscribed in the photograph matters.
By stepping back, he maps disappearance in a proposal to reclaim territories. His photographs awake our humanity, their presence bearing the light of a possible reversal.
EXPOSITION
Drive Thru
Philippe Chancel
From May 11th to June 18th, 2016
Galerie Catherine et André Hug
2, rue de l’Échaudé
75006 Paris
http://www.galeriehug.com
http://www.philippechancel.com
Tuesdays-Saturdays : 11am-1pm and 2:30pm – 7pm
