A Morocco suspended in time

News
- 30 October 2019

by Anne Laurens

In conjunction with the third Photography Biennale of the Contemporary Arab World, the Clémentine de la Féronnière gallery is hosting a group show of Morocco-themed works by three of its artists: FLORE, Marco Barbon, and Adrien Boyer–three very distinct types of photography that provide an introspective and timeless vision of the country.

*The old man who was looking at the sea* © FLORE

For its third edition, the Photography Biennale of the Contemporary Arab World, is making a stop at the Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, for a show in which Morocco takes on a singularly timeless image, devoid of any effervescence. The technical and aesthetic perspectives of the three photographers, however, are very distinctive. While FLORE’s black-and-white silver prints, made blurry via the selenium development process, lend the images the look of old, rediscovered photographs, the velvety color of Marco Barbon’s polaroids brings the images closer to a period from a more recent past. but not far away. The precision and sharpness of Adrien Boyer’s color photographs, on the other hand, anchor his proofs in a present time that seems to have stopped.

“Time and nothing else”

More than any geographical criteria, it is time and its hold on places that is the common denominator in this group exhibition. Despite silhouettes shown from behind or traces of life glimpsed at in each nook of these three visions, the strongest and most disturbing presence is that of a suspended time, of a sequence interrupted. Thus represented, the elusive character known as time leaves plenty of room for the subjective interpretation of photographers, who model it into very personal forms. Each photographic approach, be it narrative in FLORE’s work, formalistic in Adrien Boyer’s images or halfway between fiction and photojournalism in Marco Barbon’s, blossoms in a quest that leans towards the sensory. A quest that goes beyond mere sight, in which only the senses, united in a body of evidence that can only be reconstructed in one’s imagination, are able to touch upon the presence of time, and grasp all its humanity.