About Book 

芸術の亡きがらのうえに人生を表現する。
世界で最も注目される写真家 アントワーヌ・ダガタ、極限を超える最新作。


前作『抗体』がたちまち完売となったダガタの、待望の新作シリーズ。
日本との関わりが生み出した本書「赤穴」は、数年間をかけて制作された。
性器や日の丸のイメージを湛え、「私は穴なのよ」と呟いた日本人女性との関係に全編が貫かれている。
人間の存在を形づくる狂気や暴力。絶望的な追求。「撮る」とは常に限りなく、遠くへ、遠くへ、失敗を宿命づけられた試みー。
イマージュと言葉、どちらかがどちらかを超えながら、先へ先へと進んでいく。そこには、人生と写真との不純な関係、写真と被写体との公平ではない関係も激しく浮き彫りにされていく。
写真はアメーバのように増殖し、100通を超えるメールは海となる。
悲劇的な状況にいる女性たち。本質としての力強さ、美しさ。常識を逸脱する哲学と詩。ダガタの最高傑作。

AKAANA

Antoine d'Agata

My method is one of fervent objection to the photographic forms accepted until now. The camera's capacity to record determines the nature of the functions normally attributed to it: to report, store away, interpret. These arbitrary arrangements of fragmented perspectives, the truncated records of embryonic experiences, have a tenacious monopoly over the market of the gaze. Contemporary neutrality, worn at by continuing distance and cynicism, is no longer anything more than a parody of the system it is a part of. When the photographer claims to explore a given territory and to broadcast the collected data as testimony, the neutrality of this position is a sham, a paltry illusion that reassures the powerless observer as to the tangibility of his experience and the validity of his commentary. In this purportedly documentary endeavor, the photographer reduces the truth of a given situation by shirking his own responsibility to the subject. When the photographer claims a rational mental space, he classifies human beings and objects into hypothetical categories of which he is the sole custodian; a self-invented expert taking the real by storm, he categorizes, juxtaposes, and vainly ticks off his reasons in the assertion that things have a coherent order. But a list is only valid when it takes into account the madness that engendered it and the futility of wanting to use reason to give order to the violence in the world. And when the photographer tries to substitute beauty for doubt and form for experience using the strength of his gaze and a simplistic style, he sacrifices desire, anesthetizes pain, submits to the constraints of technique, lowers his art to the level of entertainment. From these shadowy zones between the event and its representation emerge deceptive discourses that would have us evade our individual responsibility to choose what use we make of the world. My photography, an unfinished narrative of brief and innocent interactions with the world without sociological, entomological or aesthetic finality, strives to reveal the rawness of both the flesh and the photographic medium, subordinates point of view to experience. My endeavor to subvert the real hinges on my ability to disturb the order of things and to document my existence in the world. This brutal relationship to the world that upends the accepted limits between art and life is only possible through an absolute commitment, both physical and mental; one that takes into account the inherent contradictions of the photographer's privileged position, which, though it claims the sentience of its gaze, can really only document a sum of experiences and a position.
ACTIVITY LOG: (Tarot, Paris, January 2006), poetic mapping of chance onto the arrangement of future events. Prologue: The Wheel of Fortune. 1: The Devil (Desire / Drifting). 2: The Sun (Flesh/Obscenity). 3: The Moon (Pleasure / Illusion). 4: The Hermit (Distance / Intelligence). 5: The Chariot (Dissolution / Black Hole). 6: The Hanged Man (Closed Doors). 7: Judgment (Gaze/Animality / Lucidity). Epilogue: The Card With No Name (The Long Waiting for Death).
I no longer have the strength, the will, the physical or mental capacity to do what I must. To be present. To disappear into reality. To escape the laws of reason. To become an actor within my own images, with discipline. Innocence is essential. The first condition is to go further. To come up with a method that is relevant, efficient, and cruel. To come to terms with the other person's humanity. A never-ending cycle of violence and compassion. Survival strategies, far removed from any morals, extreme pleasure, drug-induced ecstasies, voluntary states of unconsciousness. Beyond fear lies desire. The desire to emerge from inside oneself, to transgress the limits of the outside world. Because I am my own hell... My only escape, my only hope... is the other.

Artist Information