Logo: Trimester print

Reference
#11T4
Title
Normal
Author(s)
Baptiste Lignel
Chosen by
Mari Bastashevki
Print Run
30 (+ 5 A.P.)
Production Date
05/12/11
Publication date
05/12/11
Dimensions
20x30 cm
Features
Numbered & signed
Type of print
Lambda

Folder specifications

Paper
Ecolabel & FSC certified. 320 g. weight, pH neutral. Long Life.
Adhesive
Acid-free
Boards
Grey bookboard, pH neutral
Availability
In stock
Select currency
$ | €

120,00 €

  • Photography: Normal overview

  • Photography: Normal overview

  • Photography: Normal overview

  • Photography: Normal overview

  • Photography: Normal overview

  • Photography: Normal overview

  • Photography: Normal overview

Caption

In the past decades, masters of photography struggled with finding a visual language for expressing emotional turmoil, a defect of a mind, and the tell-tail of physiognomies, through portraits. Some failed, others succeeded, all have collectively ran down the medium into series of innite repetitions. The grainy and contrasted black and white, the absent stare, the hints and signs of the upper middle class issues… as readers, we get the implication of these symbols easily, perhaps too easily. We yell "we get it already" and images of personal depression let us loose as fast as they arrest us, long before we take the time to examine the reason for their existence.

 

The subject itself remains far from exhausted or understood. Baptiste's project is slowly unavailing portraits of children who grow up with dependency on behavior medication. His approach is "straight forward and documentary". His body of photographic work does not dwell on itself, it does not suggest a certain identiable photographic technique, nor does it direct or manipulate the viewer's emotions. Yet it's as conceptually strong and relevant as photography can attain to be. His only self-imposed rule is that he listens. He listens not only as a photographer, but a father of 3 (4) which alsomakes this work deeply personal.

 

For his series on behavior medication, Baptiste meets a group of children and adolescents using behavior medication and follows them into their adulthood. He takes their portraits in the way they wish to be photographed and, through a brief factual caption, adds the type of disorder they are diagnosed with, as well as amount and type of medication they're taking every day. He listens.

 

The fragment of work we're presented with is the second portrait of Cash A. We see an almost mature, an almost grown up man. While his haircut and clothing aid the viewer with identifying Cash with thousands of young adults of his generation, the photograph rings no alarm about the emotional state of Cash. The photograph begs the question "Why?" and through that, leads the viewer to search for other clues, to think it further, and as a result to read the tiny caption. But an explanation within text would be too easy. It would only parasitize the image. The text on the back of the portrait of Cash A, is not there to provide an explanation of Cash A, it is there to wreck the illusion of the nondescript in the photograph.

 

The illusion of nondescript personality.

Virginia Woolf once said "the meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she denes her (his) humanity." It is impossible to guess what Baptiste thinks or who he sides with from looking at this work because the matter of judging the prescription, as well as its implication is gracefully left where it began, with Cash A. himself.

 

Mari Bastashevski