Contamination

​

“The term artist does not suit me, it is too heavy, I see myself rather as an agent of contamination” 

A. D’Agata

​

Contamination pays tribute to thirty years of the unique work of  major artist Antoine D’Agata, exhibiting thirty colour and black & white prints covering a period from 1998 to 2018 as well as a video installation. 

D'Agata's photographs are not the result of a search for images but the consequence of his arduous and radical quest.  As such, the themes captured with his camera are broad, although always motivated by the quest of human essence of the outcasts. Through a drastic plunge into prostitution, urban violence and drugs, he chases the dignity of the losers, life force of the underdogs, beauty of a gesture and human solidarity where one is used to see only nothingness. The works featured for this exhibition focus on the human flesh as the core, the starting point, the essential base of life, love, extasy and suffering.  

"I started to tell a story that goes against what we see on TV, which goes against the different photographic traditions, and I want to go to the end of this story; I want to show whores who enjoy or kind criminals : a deeper, more complex humanity”

 

As part of the exhibition, the specially created live show Odysseia will be performed on 8, 9 and 10 May 2018. Directed  by Fabrice Michel, this performance is an attempt to travel to the heart of the photographer's work, using his own words.   

Odyssia is an associated project of  French May Festival 2018

​

Antoine D’Agata will be with us on Thursday 29 and Friday 30 March, 2018. 

​

Antoine D'Agata

Antoine d’Agata is a French photographer born in Marseilles in 1961, where he spent his teenage years in violent combats for political militancy. Fascinated by the marginality, he had shared total experiences with whores, junkies, thugs. He left France in 1983 to travel the world. He went first to Central America, to distant revolutions, tin the search of self-destruction energy. Finding himself in New York in the early 90’s, he pursued an interest in photography by taking courses at the International Center of Photography where his teachers included Larry Clark and Nan Goldin. During his time in New York D'Agata worked in the editorial department of Magnum. His first books of photographs, De Mala Muerte and Mala Noche, were published in 1998, and the following year Galerie Vu began distributing his work. In 2001 he published “Hometown”, and won the Niépce Prize for young photographers. He continued to exhibit and publish regularly: “Vortex” and “Insomnia” were published in 2003, “Stigma” in 2004, “Manifeste” in 2005. 

In 2004 D'Agata joined Magnum Photos and in the same year he shot his first short film “Le Ventre du Monde” (The World's Belly). This experiment led to his long feature film “Aka Ana”, shot in 2006 in Tokyo.

Since 2005 Antoine d'Agata has had no settled place of residence : he works around the world. He has numerous solo exhibitions in France, Italy, Germany, Spain,  UK, Russia, USA, Brasil, Mexique, Japan, Australia, Syria, Cameroun, Mali, etc… and publish several books a year (the last one, “Lilith”,  to be published in Feb 2018) . 

Since years he dedicates himself a lot in teaching through many workshops worldwide. He is also deeply involved in the Angkor Photo Festival which he helped to start and where he offers photography workshops to children and young adults at no charge for the past 10 years.