Background information and statement by the photographer, Antoine D'AGATA
"Sao Paulo and Salvador de Bahia crack houses. September/October 2008. An endless accumulation of empty gazes perpetuates the stunned deprivation of men defeated by history. Everything is done to eradicate all traces of desire, rage, violence, pain, fear or animal pleasure. Fragile shadows cut free of social control by regaining control over their bodies. Through the degeneration of bodies and the paroxysm of emotions, the images reveal fragments of society that escape from customary analysis and visualization of the social body, but nonetheless, are its primary elements. Confronting the inherent contradictions to the use of documentary photography, structuring a physical and psychic path overshadowed by dependence, pain, risk, hazard and unconsciousness. Poverty is antithetical to order. Bestiality is the ultimate rampart against the anaesthesia of senses and the mindset of a society that defines objects and people as commodity. Those who emancipate themselves from physical deprivation and evade the moral order access the last magic rites of instinct, as the intimate territory of social resistance, antidote to the merchandise dream, an alternative to the violence of social stability. The production of pornographic images may paradoxically be the only true committed position, an alternative to the violence of a social stability based on the frustration of unfulfilled lust. Only the mingling of bodies lies beyond the reach of history, in a slow agony, under the seal of consciousness and irony, warding off death and living up to an amorous view of the world." (Antoine D'AGATA)
Content
About French Magnum photographer Antoine D'AGATA (b.1961, in Marseille)
Photo books by and with contributions by Antoine D'AGATA
- Format
- Large oversize softcover 30 x 40 x 2 cm. (15.6 x 11.7 x 0.6 inches) within a custom made case, 36 pp., 34 color ills., English, Ltd. to 500 copies.