CCNY | 2013 Darkroom Residency Recipients

Born in France in 1981, Pierre Le Hors graduated from the ICP-Bard MFA Program in 2010. His book Firework Studies was published by Hassla in 2011, and his work was recently included in the exhibition Vague Storytelling at CCNY. An upcoming zine published by Dashwood Books, Byways & Through Lines, is due out in early 2013. Pierre lives and works in Brooklyn.

Over the past few months, I have been making a series of abstracted still lives that take as their point of departure the conventions of studio photography and sleight-of-hand. I am interested in the tools common to both the magician and to the studio photographer: scenic backdrops, mirrors, props, theatrical lighting and staging of the subject, the dark-cloth and the cape, the camera obscura and the hidden chamber of the escape artist. Both crafts rely on an array of devices designed to conceal and to reveal, to trick the eye and shape the perceptions of their audience. In these images, I will often single out certain elements (a pattern, fold, or line) in order to reorganize the hierarchy of subject, foreground, backdrop, scale and distance, repeating these elements from one image into the next, successively abstracting the relationship between symbol and referent. I want these images to speak to a certain loss of innocence for the young medium of photography, as it enters an age still grappling with notions of subjectivity and photographic truth.

www.pierrelehors.com

The CCNY Darkroom Residency Program is made possible by generous support from Fujifilm; Kodak; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; and The Jerome Foundation.