Tom Benson
Public show days: 12 – 17 June 2o18
Private view: 12 June 2018 (by invitation only)
In this year's presentation at photo basel, Galerie Albrecht will focus on two artists who integrate reflections on photography as a medium and on the act of taking photographs into their work:
What happens when a photograph is taken, and what is the relationship between object (that which is photographed) and active subject (the photographer)?
'If seeing precedes words, what precedes seeing?,' asks Olivier Richon. And: Does the motif of a photograph become an object, or is the photographer the object and the motif the active subject that wants to be photographed and casts a spell on the photographer, since, like a fetish, it has magic powers? Olivier Richon takes leave of the notion that a photograph is merely a document of a real object or a real situation, created by the photographer. Even without Photoshop, the photograph is intrinsically subject to manipulation, he suggests, either by the photographer's subjective gaze or by the manipulative charisma of the motif, which forces a photograph. His photographs stage scenarios that seem familiar and seemingly easy to read, but yet they are difficult to decipher. They are quite mysterious: Allegories? Still lifes? Surreal worlds?
Tom Benson puts the matter slightly differently.
The idea behind these images was to embody the process and activity of looking. This is where the emphasis lies, rather than on the individual character of the sitter. So I do not think of them as portraits. Looking across a sequence the viewer mirrors the activity shown in the images. The small shifts of the gaze or turn of a head are sensed before they are understood, and in being made aware of this a value is given to the space between seeing and recognition.