2023-12-22 16:30:01
Par Marie-Madeleine Remoleur
Published on Dec 22, 23 at 5:30 p.m. See my news Follow Le Pays d’Auge
“Today, I can say that I have a history and a relationship with Deauville (Calvados),” smiles Omar Victor Diop. For two years, the photographer from Senegal has been linked to the Plateches contact photographic creation festival.
After a first residency for the 2022 edition of the festival, the photographer returned this year to give birth to a new exhibition and a book (read box). Colorful photographs and stagings, where imaginary characters that he plays inhabit a Deauville setting of his wanderings.
“Deauville was the theater of my thoughts”
“What do we pack in the padded compartments of our sentimental suitcases when we travel? “. When he arrived in residence for the festival in Deauville two years ago, the photographer born in Dakar let himself be carried away by this question to guide him in his wanderings in Deauville.
“When I arrived, I knew little regarding Deauville, I must have come one weekend when I was a student,” remembers the photographer who mainly took an “architectural look” at the seaside resort. “What interested me were these houses, the streets, to stroll around and have a rather landscape reading of the city. I wanted to do work in Deauville, more than in Deauville,” comments the photographer.
Omar Victor Diop, during the previous edition of the Planches contact festival. ©Archive
This approach continued for almost two years of residence, during short stays “of several days” in Deauville, “over two winters and two springs”. From his wanderings and his reflections on the intimate dimension of travel were born large photographs where Omar Victor Diop expanded tenfold to infinity in different emblematic places of the seaside resort, such as the Bains Pompeiens, the Villa Strassburger, the beach or the Normandy, but also other anonymous houses.
“Deauville was the theater of my thoughts,” smiles the man who gave birth to productions where he invites us into the intimacy of his imagination, inhabited by his childhood memories in Senegal. “I started this project just when I decided to settle in France following 10 years of going back and forth between Senegal and France,” he explains. These photos are also the thoughts of a new expatriate, there is a lot of melancholy, a little nostalgia too, but it is not painful because I can return to Dakar whenever I want.”
I took a bit of Dakar to Normandy.
Omar Victor Diop
A photo book on Deauville
Omar Victor Diop unveiled a book published by Éditions Louis Vuitton dedicated to Deauville. A work entitled Fashion Eye Deauville from his work in residence for the Planches contact festival for two years, in 2022 and 2023. In a video, he says: “I started on the principle of a day materialized by the change of color of the sky which goes from blue to turquoise, from golden-yellow for midday, then we move towards roses and we end in a kind of twilight which corresponds to the last three images of the book. This palette of colors is perhaps the palette of emotions that I experienced and that I still experience at the idea of Deauville.”
A laboratory for experimenting
In small or very large format, “in a story created from scratch”, Omar Victor Diop’s photos reveal to us multiple imaginary characters that he interprets by multiplying, thus remaining faithful to the self-portrait, his favorite exercise .
Videos: currently on Actu
“In Deauville, I developed a new way of making self-portraits, I went further,” he says, emphasizing the very “creative” side of his two years of residency: “Until Now, I was making fairly frontal self-portraits, with camera gazes because I often referred to real stories and people, the idea being to invoke their memory, to make them participate in the conversation. For my series at Contact Sheets, I created an army of anonymous characters, narrative soldiers. This gave me more flexibility because I had less need to explain that it wasn’t regarding me, but regarding fictional characters.” A creative avenue that he intends to continue to explore in his future projects.
Deauville is the setting for the scripted wanderings of photographer Omar Victor Diop. (©Omar Victor Diop)
For almost two years, Omar Victor Diop made Deauville an “open-air studio” and a place where he might experiment. “This project was very useful because I always created more in Dakar in my studio, or in Paris. There I had a sort of return to the street. The idea of taking my camera and making an illustrated journal was born in Deauville and I am going to pursue it,” rejoices the photographer for whom the residency will remain an important moment:
In my way of working, I am rather a homebody and wild. In Deauville, I left the studio and returned to the street to photograph places, I worked with other photographers who all have very different backgrounds, I let myself go by shooting very large formats… I think that it That’s why we do residencies, to challenge our practices and expose ourselves to other forms of creation.
Omar Victor Diop
His photos are exhibited free of charge until January 7 in Deauville: rue Eugène Colas; Quai de l’Impératrice Eugénie and Place Gabrielle Chanel.
Follow all the news from your favorite cities and media by subscribing to Mon Actu.
1703265538
#army #anonymous #characters #Omar #Victor #Diop #stages #Deauville #strolls
