Autodafé

The 11th of January 2010, I will finally destroy all the original negatives from the serie, about seventeen films of 36 BW exposures each.

After working for more than a year on that project, it appears to me that it is necessary to bring the attention of a certain public about the signification of this action.

More than a year of work, two trips for the shooting, an incredible amount of contacts with public and private institutions for... NOTHING concrete.

The paradoxe is the gap between the huge appreciation this work received and the no policy of engagement from the various structures supposed to encourage creation, and artists.

Without getting into the full details with a list of all stories related to that, I would like to bring some explanations.

I admit that I accepted a certain amount of free publications in order to give the maximum of visibility to that work, before I finally realized the systematic vampirism from all structures interested into the work I produced.

Through all my contacts, the work was seen as extremely positive and significant, even necessary but the answer was always the same: "we're sorry but we have no budget to pay you". What used to be the limits of the system apparently became A system...

That lead to the hanging of a part of serie at the Museum of Modern Art in Tel-Aviv for three months, at the exibition of the complete serie at the headquater of the most important israeli insurance compagny for two months, at numerous publications in a press willing to communicate (for free) on the centennial of the city... etc

The only ones who have brought me a concrete support (offering me a plane ticket so I could assist to the opening of my own exibition) were the members of the French institute. My kind regards to them.

Later on, I have been often called by various communities and gouvernemental agencies willing to use my work for their communication on the centennial. Same old story "no budget". I even had propositions to just sent a CD for a slide show so they won't have any expenses, even not for my presence...

I started to believe that all these people were pretty well paid every month in order to look for the work of artists who don't need to make a decent living from their work.

The problem has never been to find structures enthousiastic about this author's work. The real difficulty has been to find a single person able to realize that an artist has the very basic need to put something into his plate!

The negatives will then be burned... A video will be display on the web, a lawyer will attempt to certify the act.

Will stay only the twelve large format silver gelatin prints (60x90 cm). Four of the prints in the edition of two, the other eight prints in a unique edition.

PS// Along with this act, I am looking for the testimonies of professional photographers who have to stand these abuses from the medias or other cultural structures.

Let's not forget that behind every picture, there is a person...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Autodafé

[DominiqueAlavoine]

Non!!!!!!! Jean baptiste , t'as pas fait ça ?