The exhibition on view at Le BAL until April 14, 2013, has nothing in common with what we usually call an exhibition, a term that makes one think of walls, frames, lighting and buyers.

You might call it an installation, and this is one, but it’s an installation’s responsibility to define its form and meaning. I would say that it is above all an immense self-portrait, or an autobiography, with the downstairs room at the BAL representing the different layers explored and recorded by the photographer. But even then, we can only use the term as long as its modes of expression overlap and intermingle. (This will be the question explored by François Cheval during a lecture to be held on March 27 as part of the exhibition.)

Antoine d’Agata came to photography rather late. Untrained, he started taking pictures when he was 30, studying with Nan Goldin and Larry Clark. His first work appeared in the 1990s, beginning with Mala Muerte and Mala Noche, then Vortex, Insomnia and Ice in 2012, and now Anticorps.

Because the work on display at Le BAL is unique, it’s difficult to account for what we see there. What are we seeing? And how are we to see it? How can we decipher these thousand images mainly taken by Antoine d’Agata, who has claimed in interviews that at times he becomes, “the witness to the experience, to the point where [he] renounce[s] the photographic act to become its subject,” leaving “the other” to take the picture? Of course, that would only concern what he calls his “night photographs,” as opposed to “day photographs.” The latter are supposed to show the war and violence and injustices of the world (even if war has also been waged at night since the First Gulf War). This distinction was for a long time unconscious, regardless of the fact that one was cold and distanced while the second, his night photography, was taken in the places and moments of extreme feeling.

Bernard Perrine

Read the full version of this text on the French version of Le Journal.

Exhibitions

Antoine d'Agata - "Anticorps"
Until April 14th 2013
Le BAL
6 Impasse de la Défense
75018 Paris
France
+ 033 (0) 144 70 75 50
Wednesday - Friday 12am - 8pm
Saturday 11am - 8pm
Sunday 11am - 7pm

Antoine d'Agata
Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire
From March 15th to April 27th, 2013
17 Rue des Filles du Calvaire
75003 Paris
France