Flying, Suspension and Dancing

© Denis Darzacq, Hyper 08, 2007. Courtesy VU la galerie.

There are some recurring themes and visual motifs that keep cropping up in photographic work. As part of any research into presenting and working on a topic, I thought it would be good to highlight some of those which I keep coming across. Take a look at the following examples, and please comment if you have any more  examples to add or any thoughts…

© Denis Darzacq, Hyper 19, 2007. Courtesy VU la galerie.

Denis Darzacq’s fabulous Hyper series is on show in Arles at Vu Gallery, Capitole. Darzaq’a large scale colour images set the performance of street dancers amongst the consumer goods found on supermarket shelves in Rouen and Paris. The static lines of shelves with their packaged products provide a graphic backdrop for the lone dancers, who throw shapes with their bodies as they perform. Movement is frozen within the frame. A tension between stillness and movement is produced as the performance is captured on camera ‘live’ in one of the theatres of consumerism – the supermarket.

“This is motion driven by pleasure. As Paul Valery wrote in his study of dance, such movements oppose utility: they resist, refusing to submit to economic conditions. They are self-sufficient… mobilities dedicated to consumption and defined by the superstore-space meet with a response to absolute freedom.” (Taken from the Rencontres press pack).

Questions as to the photographer’s intentions arise – a function of many artists’ statements – as well as observations regarding the similarities and differences between these images, see below. What do you think?

Compare with Sam Taylor-Wood’s Self Portrait Suspended 1, 2004 of a lone figure set against an altogether different backdrop.

Then look at Julia Fullerton Batten’s recent work In Between, 2009.