into the confines of the contemporary art world via a set of impeccable, large-format chromogenic prints.
Harsh Truth
Luc Delahaye
into the confines of the contemporary art world via a set of impeccable, large-format chromogenic prints. At a recent show at La Maison Rouge in Paris, he explores war and natural disasters, from the current fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to the 2005 tsunami, the aftermath of 9/11, the Rwandan massacres and more–fragments of disparate yet fundamentally identical narratives.
These are quiet images. There are no depictions of mangled body parts, contorted features or grimaces of despair, insanity or fanaticism. This is war, rendered in icy objectivity–beginning, middle and end. From the halls of power to the battlefields that pit man against man or the brutal force of nature, Delahaye lays bare a web of interconnections and sets up a chilling face-to-face between the men in suits who run the world and the impoverished inhabitant of wherever who are waiting for them to unleash hell into their lives or rescue them from it; poor blokes whose only wrong doing is to be in the wrong place: the pariah state of the moment or a fault line bursting with activity. The heads of state and diplomats enact the bureaucratic logic of their respective administrations–photo op et al–systematically deciding which country to fight, which people to send aid to and which media to extend exclusive coverage to. Armies of men, outfitted with the most high-tech equipment money can buy–or that their superiors will allow them to have–are parachuted into the midst of it all, sent to put in practice what was decided on paper, deliver aid, pull a trigger and, once in a while, serve as canon fodder.
Once the war has run its course, these modern day commanders are still in the climate controlled chambers of power, these theaters of war where files are always in perfect order, bottles of mineral water accessorize every table and, one suspects, not a spec of dust would ever be found. Some find that the tables have turned and that they are no longer holding the reigns, waiting instead for another implacable administrative machinery to run its course and judge them for what they compelled others to do-–sentencing for bureaucratic closure, so the wheel can spin again.
Delahaye’s work inhabits the ambiguous space that hovers between documentary and art. Each of the prints in the Maison Rouge exhibition are composed and framed with exacting perfection. As if on stage, a central character or action is centered and surrounded by host of details and actions that weave complexity into the narrative and help visually structure each piece. It’s a succession of chilling tableaux vivants that quietly demand that we pay attention. But at times, Delahaye no longer documents reality and represents a fictionalized account of events instead. The image of a fallen Taliban soldier that is, in fact, entirely staged, the medium or the means of a message, a piece of a larger picture of media deceit or an aesthetic choice.
But above all, Delahaye highlights the moment when the viewer and photographer’s gaze become utterly insignificant, transformed into a furtive glimpse onto an inexorable and implacable process.
