Monographies catalogues et livres d’artistes

"Philippe Durand is interested in the discrepancy between the image that is magnified by advertising these signs and objects and the way they really work. The figures and the subjects of the photographs are clues about production in a capitalist society. According to the logic of purely visual photographers, we should ultimately call Philippe Durand a photographer (just as Christopher Williams), because both of them do the job that photographers refuse to do, that is, representing everything that is produced by the merchant world in order to be represented. All the rest is exoticism. This accumulation of images on the most diverse mediums should be brought back to our consciousness; we should stop treating these objects as parasites over which or eyes must slip. Bringing to light subliminal shapes and images: we are right in the middle of the realism discussion. What is real made of? Is it the world of visibility as a product under the capitalist regime: information, advertisement/marketing, entertainment, knowledge, or culture? The visual pollution peculiar to the new capitalism echoes the opaqueness of the financial world, which governs the ultra-capitalism that is being championed by the Mont Pelerin Society..  Thus, what may seem paradoxical at first glance in Philippe Durand’s OFFSHORE project –shooting the invisible side of capitalism – is ultimately only the achievement of an approach that he has set up for about fifteen years – this being its final consequence. Having learned from his previous experience of focusing on the visual aspect of the merchant world, he travelled to the Caribbean in 2006. He only found there small towns set in a tropical landscape. But these lush landscapes, which he loosely represents as if he were documenting a piece of Hollywood macadam, are home of the clearing houses where a fair share of the wealth generated by global capitalism passes in transit, only to become invisible – move along, nothing to see here! There is nothing to see indeed, as the figures on the screens of the clearing houses are scrolling far away from the eyes of all of the world’s photographers and tax investigators. By photographing only the banks and their signs, the photographer brings up to date a comment made by Bertold Brecht in 1931: “The situation (of reproducible arts) is rather complicated by the fact that less then ever does the mere reflection of reality reveal anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp or AEG works tells us next to nothing about these institutions. Reality as it 'really' is, has drifted to the functional. The reification of human relations – the factory, say – means that they are no longer explicit.” However, by confronting the kitsch-looking and insignificant fronts of offshore banks with the image-merchandise of limousines, SUVs, golf buggies, motorboats, sailboats or yachts, he compensates the invisibility of “black finance” with the hyper-visibility that is produced by hypercapitalism. As far as finance and exchange values are concerned there is nothing to see, whereas what you see on the image-production and practical-usage side is sheer exhibitionism. One depends on the other. The new capitalism uses at least 4x4 SUVs, two wheels for finance and two for communication – which can be tagged “image production”." Text by Joerg Bader [caption id="attachment_892" align="alignnone" width="150"] Philippe Durand – Offshore[/caption]