Antoine D'Agata por EYEMAZING
Hace ya más de un año encontré esta entrevista que le hizo Barbara Oudiz a Antoine D'Agata en la edición 04 del 2004 de EYEMAZING.
La entrevista está en ingles y por ahora no tengo mucho tiempo para hacer la traducción. Acá la dejo:
EYEMAZING meeting with Antoine d'Agata
Stigma
The first time you meet Antoine d'Agata, it is virtually impossible
not to notice his eyes: large, round, and dark. Eyes that seem
particularly well-adapted to the path he has chosen to follow. For
some 10 years, d'Agata has been documenting his own body and soul, and
those of others, as they wander into extreme and endless nights,
drowning in the raw brutality of drugs, bars, and prostitution. Like a
feverish deep-sea diver, he regularly plunges into the darkest
recesses of human nature before coming back to the surface for air.
When we met in Paris, he had just returned from two weeks in Mexico
which he spent, once again, exploring the murky waters of life on the
edge. Tall, thin, and dressed in black, warm and timid at the same
time, nothing in d'Agata's appearance or attitude hints at these
extreme nomadic journeys animated by his "obsessions and anxieties".
His fascination with extreme states of being began at an early age.
Born in Marseilles in 1961, the son of a butcher, he quit high school
at age 17. Like a slow suicide, he wandered for years, lost in the
excesses of heroin, alcohol, sex, and punk rock. In 1982, he decided
to leave Marseilles, a decision that "saved my life", he notes. He
travelled and eventually ended up in New York in 1990, where he
delivered pizzas and began studying photography at the International
Center of Photography. There he met Nan Goldin, who will have a strong
influence on his work.
Today, Antoine d'Agata is one of the most sought-after photographers
in Europe. His first book, Mala Noche (1998) was followed by four
others, including Vortex and Insomnia, published in 2003. The photos
shown here are from his new book Stigma (Images en Manoeuvre,
September 2004) featuring 37 photos in both black and white and
colour, and a text in both French and English. Antoine spoke to us
about the circumstances in which these photographs were taken and
explained the gradual changes taking shape in his work.
Barbara Oudiz: How did the project for Stigma get started?
Antoine d'Agata: Most of the images in the book were taken in the
towns of Las Palmas and Playa del Ingles in the Canary Islands. The
actress Isabelle Huppert invited me there to follow the shooting of Ma
Mère, a film based on a story by Georges Bataille. I didn't go there
as the set photographer for the production company, though. My idea
was to document the filming in my own way, to put together a personal
diary made up of my experience of the place. Very soon after the
project got started, I realised that the atmosphere on the film set
was not conducive to what I wanted to do. Although I learned a lot
about how a film is made, and on the human level it was a very good
experience, as a photographic experience it was very frustrating.
BO: So you left the film set?
A d'A: I continued documenting the film's production, but none of
those pictures are in this book. I … decided to search out and
photograph the world outside of the shooting. I wanted to find out
what Bataille himself really felt. I had read his books a long time
ago, and when I re-read them recently, I realised how much he'd
influenced me and how similar my universe and my obsessions were to
what his had been: sex, bars, prostitution. The similarities are not
in terms of the answers we found, but in the kinds of questions we
asked.
BO: What exactly did the Canary Islands bring to your project?
A d'A: Most, but not all of the images in Stigma, were made in the
Canary Islands. A few were made in France (Brest and Paris), others in
Naples and Vilnius. In all, I spent 20 days taking these photographs.
This being said, it's true that the Canary Islands are a very
unnatural place. There is a constant influx of tourists and a big
market for prostitution, both homosexual and heterosexual. The
nightlife leads to lots of quick encounters; people come and go, and
never meet again.
BO: How did you decide on the title Stigma?
A d'A: Actually, at first I was going to call the book Divinus Deus,
the title of Bataille's unfinished volume of four stories, of which
"Ma Mère" was one. I saw my book as a sort of personal interpretation
and continuation of Bataille's work. Then suddenly, ten minutes before
going to press, we realised that we were going to have a copyright
problem with his publishers! I chose Stigma because it evokes the idea
of a burning or wounding of the flesh. And the word "stigmata" of
course gives a religious connotation. All of these sex scenes are like
wounds. In Bataille's Divinus Deus, sex replaces God.
BO: These images also appear to continue your previous work. Are there
things that have changed?
A d'A: There is a certain degree of continuity. But there are also
differences. I am trying not to lose myself as much in poetic
wandering here, as I did in the past. I want to get to the core of
things... I'd like to get rid of everything that is overly romantic,
to reach a purer form of expression. As a result, these photos are
more brutal, rawer, and also more sober, than my previous ones.
BO: Tell us about the exterior shots, all of those austere buildings…
A d'A: The exterior shots are not there, this time, as a breathing
space between sexual interior scenes. They do not function as
objective spaces. They're there because I felt the need to anchor all
of these scenes in an outer reality. These concrete walls and small
windows are the outer reality behind which all of the sex scenes are
taking place.
BO: In other words, you are trying to underline the tension that
exists between the objective, outside world, and the extreme intimacy
of your interior shots?
A d'A: I am emphasising that sort of tension, I suppose. But the
tension is not only between the exterior and the interior. There is a
photograph here (Susan : photo Number 27) showing a transsexual behind
bars. She is not in prison. She lives half way between exterior and
interior realities. In fact, she is living … in an abandoned shopping
centre in Playa del Ingles. People rent abandoned shops and storage
cellars there. The photos are symbolic of the walls which enclose us.
We all live locked in. The exterior shots show closed spaces, just
like the interior shots show closed cellars and rooms.
BO: Are most of the photos here self-portraits?
A d'A: Only about five or six are self-portraits, though I'd rather
not say which ones. I am definitely one of the main players in these
scenes, but the book is constructed much less as a self-portrait than
my previous work. This time I've made a conscious decision to keep a
certain distance. My aim is not to exclude myself from these scenes,
but to make my work less of a personal vagabonding than in the past.
My perspective is less subjective, I have less empathy.
BO: Who are the other people in these images, then? Friends?
A d'A: They are not "friends" in the usual sense of the word. We don't
have any special affinity except that we find ourselves together,
plunged into the night with male and female prostitutes. I am very
close to the people I work with, even if our relations only last one
night. We exchange very deep, personal secrets. Our relations are
frank and straightforward. My camera is there from the very beginning,
but the photographs are taken when we're already far into the night.
They know as much as I do what I'm looking for when I take these
photos. And they know I will be publishing them.
BO: Yet there is a degree of violence in the sex scenes. Is this a
reflection of the kind of relations you have?
A d'A: Occasionally, our relations are painful, but never
embarrassing. They are painful when we are confronted with the
violence and brutality of the sexual act. After the sexual climax, for
example, I am in the same state of exhaustion as they are; I feel the
same emptiness, like successive waves of death. … We're not in a
situation of love and communion. We're in a universe in which love is
bought and sold. The photo I chose for the cover of Stigma (susan:
photo number 46) is symbolic in that regard. It shows human nature as
situated half way between the mind and the flesh, half way between man
and beast.
BO: Do you plan the way you make your photographs or do they just happen?
A d'A: I don't plan anything. I just take one day at a time and
improvise as I go along. I find myself in the night, in extreme places
and situations where there are no rules. Going as far as I do with
strangers is already enough to occupy my mind and my soul… These
photos are not reportage, nor are they pornographic. It is very
difficult to say what they are. The blurry aspect of some of the
images is not an aesthetic choice, yet it is not there completely by
chance either. It is just a tool. Colour and blur are tools that help
me to construct a narrative. It's as if you asked a writer what kind
of pen or pencil he uses. This is completely secondary.
BO: Would you say that your approach to photography is gradually changing?
A d'A: I'm starting to turn the page a little on some things. In
Mexico, I spent two weeks totally immersed in the world of
prostitution, alcohol, and drugs. Yet I didn't take a single photo of
those nights. I haven't changed, my life hasn't changed, but my
photography is changing slowly. My work is becoming less
autobiographical and more lucid, less dream-like. The photos in Stigma
weren't intended to trigger any emotions. I wanted to show a sum of
physical sensations, based on sexual desire, in which emotions play a
very small part.
BO: How has photography influenced your relation to drugs and alcohol,
or vice versa?
A d'A: Photography is the tool that allowed me to come back to
reality. It's like an umbilical cord that attaches me to a world
outside of myself. Before photography, I lived in a sort of black hole
for years. Drugs and alcohol are still part of the way I work as a
photographer. But they operate in different ways now. Drugs allow me
to remain lucid and maintain a certain natural distance from the
world. Alcohol, on the other hand, brings me closer to the core of an
experience. It melts down all the barriers between myself and the
outside world, and allows me to go towards extreme encounters. These
two influences are not contradictory. My distance and my desire to go
to the extreme core of things coexist in me.
BO: Can you tell us a little bit about your future projects?
A d'A: I plan on making the book Stigma into a diptych. The second
book should be ready next spring. I am also making a video for the
very first time. While I was in Mexico, I spent four days on the
northern border, near Texas, in what they call a "red zone", checking
out the places I want to film. I start shooting the video September
2004 and it will be out in the spring of 2005, at the same time as the
second book. Sex, drugs and alcohol will be present in both of these
new works. But the images will also be about emptiness, fear, doubt,
and obscurity. I have absolutely no training in video, and that is the
way I want to approach the project. I want the contact to be
spontaneous. We'll see what happens!
BO: There is another new element in your professional life: you've
just left the Vu Agency in Paris and joined Magnum.
A d'A: Yes, although this doesn't imply any change in the way I will
work. But it's true that I want to open myself to new territories. I'd
like my confrontation with reality to become more brutal, to create
situations in which I can better react to the world. I never
considered myself a photojournalist, but I don't want to lock myself
away in an artistic ivory tower either. My work remains documentary.
An agency is a tool for getting closer to an event. I feel the need
for a permanent immersion, painful or not, into the real world.
Text by Barbara Oudiz
Eyemazing.com issue 04 - 2004
© Antoine D'Agata
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