Part of Mois de la Photo a Paris. Dolron focused on the way in which the individual participants in some festivals in India and Thailand experienced their religion and she often encountered that the self-mutilation at these religious gatherings were an attempt to transcend.
Exaltation - Gaze - Xteriors. Part of Mois de la Photo a' Paris
For this years Month of Photography in Paris the Institut Ne'erlandais will produce a
special designed book and exhibition of three series of the Dutch photographer
Desiree Dolron, Exaltation - images of religion and death, Gaze and Xteriors.
Shortly some words about the three series, that will be represented in the
exhibition and the book.
In Exaltation Desiree Dolron tried to capture religious rituals in Asia as
objectively as possible. She focused on the way in which the individual participants
in some festivals in India and Thailand experienced their religion and she often
encountered that the self-mutilation at these religious gatherings were an attempt
to transcend. Subsequently for her next series Gaze still fascinated by the
phenomenon of transcendence Dolron was curious what happens when in a non-religious
context, people are cut off from their sensory perceptions and she started to make
portraits under water. During intensive sessions, sometimes lasting six hours, the
persons being photographed became increasingly tired and after a certain period
self-absorbed going into a trance comparable with the persons in the series
Exaltation.
For her series Xteriors Desiree Dolron got her inspiration by a meeting with an
everyday girl in the street that resembled so much one of the portraits "Portraits
of a young woman" of her favourite painters Petrus Christus. Inspired by among
others the primitive Flemish painters this very pictorial photographic series shows
another world, portraits and images of strong personalities in Northerly light
filtered by old window panes. Desiree Dolron in her life and in work is fascinated
by the vague borderline between appearance, perception and reality ; her photography
is reflection of this attraction.
Charlotte Cotton (Head of Programming of the Photographers Gallery, London) stated :
"Her capacity to find the visual form to realise her experience of the out-of-time
strangeness of the environments in which she worked has become inverted, localise
onto the very process of artistic creation. Out of the most contemporary techniques
for photography, Dolron locates the enduring connections with both the visual
language but also the states of mind that have been present in centuries of picture
making".
Following the theme of this year Month of Photography in Paris, "The printed page",
the Institut Ne'erlandais has invited the French graphic designer and editor Xavier
Barral (Editions Xavier Barral) to design a special catalogue of the work of Desiree
Dolron. Authors: Mark Haworth-Booth, former curator photography at the Victoria &
Albert Museum, Senior research Fellow, London College of Communication, Senior
Fellow, royal College of Art. Pierre Assouline, French writer and journalist, former
editor in chief of LIRE, author of some important biographies and of several novels
as Lutetia, La Cliente and Double vie.
Info:
Desiree Dolron http://www.desireedolron.com
Edition Xavier Barral http://www.exb.fr
Opening: 8 November 2006 / 6.30pm - 8.30 pm
Institut Neerlandais
Marieke Wiegel
121 rue de Lille - Paris
Tuesday till Sunday 1 pm / 7pm