Delahaye said of his photographs that “it is just true that there are beautiful landscapes in Afghanistan where there is also death. To not show this complexity? Reporters in the press see the Afghan landscape but they don’t show it, they are not asked to. All my efforts have been to be as neutral as possible, and to take in as much as possible, and allow an image to return to the mystery of reality.” In “History” Delahaye appropriates the actual scenes of these newsworthy places back for us in order to make objects of art. In some ways he has created a kind of Pop art for adults — with the places in the news substituted for cartoons. And like Pop art he does it in a style, the documentary style, that often seems to have nothing particularly special about it. “I have no style, that is my style,” Delahaye said on the subject. He simply believes that by trying to become as clear a medium as possible something important occurs, a kind of alchemy, that is not simply the truth.
artnet.com Magazine Features — The Real Thing
Posted 1 year ago
