Visiting Practitioners' Web Sites

Because of my geographical and personal situation, I have very few chances to visit exhibitions.

Luckily the web is an endless source of material and opportunities for research.

CHRISTOPHE GIN

I visited the site of Christophe Gin (http://www.christophegin.org/#!/index ), a French photographer who recently was awarded the Carmignac Foundation's Photojournalism Award (http://www.saatchigallery.com/current/a_retrospective.php).

Gin won the grant for “Colonie,” his series, created in 2009,  on concepts of lawlessness in French Guiana.

Created in 2009, the award has sponsored photojournalism in conflict zones and neglected regions. “I wanted to interrogate the notion of ‘law’ within this area of inner Guiana, outside the norms of the Republican mainland,” says Gin in an interview. 

I was really impressed and inspired by the series "LE PONT DE L'OYAPOCK": I like the powerful use of grainy black & white, that gives to each shot a sense of drama, desolation, hopeless abandon. I like too the crooked frames, askew horizons, so that the overall message arising from the shots is disorder, no rules, no respect, lawless land, nothing right.

 This series made me meditate about the relation between the absence of colours and  simmetry, and the absence  of positive concepts in images.

Is it always this way? Is it about my perception or is there a general interpretation rule stating that no colour/no simmetry = not positive? What about painting?

I made a brief reasearch in the web and I found some interesting notes about this topic in a forum: the question is "Why is it so rare to find black & white works in painting, while it is so popular in photography?".

The answer could sound simple: photography was born in black & white. But there were pictorial expressions developing on monochromatic base (i.e. the so called "grisaille"), while some techniques, like engraving, etching where monochromatic too, mostly in black & white. Nevertheless, only photography associates so much the black & white technique and the mood arising from a photo work, even it has not always been this way (i.e. daguerrotypes, Ansel Adams etc).

I believe that Gin's purpose is to link the backwardness, total imperfection, limit of the subject to some self-imposed limits of photographic process, so that his works can send a more powerful message (he says "interrogate") and are not limited to the mere documentation of a land and his population.

References

Christophe Gin Site http://www.christophegin.org/index
accessed december 5, 2015

Saatchi Gallery Site http://www.saatchigallery.com/current/a_retrospective.php

accessed december 5, 2015

LE PONT DE L'OYAPOCK  Site  http://www.christophegin.org/index/G0000YjH9uzHoFUY/I0000Xq6b8qaSC98

accessed december 5, 2015