© Antoine d'Agata, Courtesy Kahmann Gallery
KAHMANN Gallery Lindengracht 35 1015KB Amsterdam Pays-Bas
D'Agata focuses mostly on the dark side of society. His raw photo’s are both troubling and brooding, as lyrical and beautiful.
Kahmann Gallery will exhibit about 20 works that, in contrast to earlier exhibitions, form a very calm and serene exhibition. Not only will we show recent works, but also icons from d’Agata’s earlier books, Mala Noche, Insomnia, HoME ToWN and Agonie.
“I never photograph if I’m not a full participant in the situation I am interfering in or provoking. I slowly abandoned the position behind the camera to integrate myself in the images, as a mere character of the situations I depict. The process was brutal. Distancing myself from straightforward documentary photography, I document what I live and I live the situations I document. By transgressing the border that separates the photographer from the photographed, I become the object of my photography, a forced actor of my own premeditated scenario. The craving and the pain, through the sexual act, take me back to my own body. I face up, in my flesh, to the disorder of the world, to its violence and indignity. It is not a question of opening my eyes to this excess and horror, but letting it contaminate me, for better or worse.
© Antoine d'Agata, Courtesy Kahmann Gallery
I live my life with people who use pleasure as a way to impose their existence and identity in a world that denies them every right. But pleasure can’t be separated from pain and alienation. Pleasure is still a dark territory to me and I am exhausted exploring its limits. It’s just a route. Satisfaction isn’t the aim. Feeling might be the point. I’m hooked on adrenaline.”
Antoine d’Agata was born in Marseille (1961). He moved to the USA in 1983 where he would stay for 10 years. He followed photography classes from Nan Goldin and Larry Clark at the International Centre of photography in New York. In 2004 d’Agata joined Magnum Photo’s. He has exhibited widely, published various books and won the Prix Nièpce in 2001. D’Agata lives and works all over the world.
© Antoine d'Agata, Courtesy Kahmann Gallery
Photos et vignette © Antoine d'Agata, Courtesy Kahmann Gallery