ART
Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin 'Photographs' |
Written 30 January |
Saturday 28 November, 11:00Galerie Karsten Greve, 75003 [map]Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
Within the context of Paris Photo, dedicated this year to photographers from Middle-East, the Karsten Greve Gallery presents several photographic series produced in Iraq and in Afghanistan by the British duo
Adam Broomberg &
Oliver Chanarin.
Conceived in 2005, the Red House series feature photographs of graffiti made by Kurd prisoners on the walls of their cells hidden in the headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s party and discovered only in 1991 when the site had been abandoned. These intense images capture the isolated details as well as the creativity of the prisoners living in the solitude, fear, endless boredom and supreme horror of incarceration.
In June 2008, during a trip to Afghanistan, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin realised the series The Day Nobody Died. Embedded with British Army units on the front line in Helmand Province, they took along in a simple cardboard box a roll of photographic paper 50 meters long and 76,2 cm wide. They arrived during the deadliest month of the war, on the first day of their visit they witnessed several executions; a person from the BBC was dragged from his car and executed, nine Afghan soldiers were killed in a suicide attack. The following day, three British soldiers died, pushing the number of British combat fatalities to 100.
In response to each of these events, and also to a series of more mundane moments, the photographers invite the viewer to question his relationship with the representation of violence and the real nature of the relationship between culture, politics and morality.
