Alex Majoli

Scene
February 22 - April 28, 2019
  • Republic of Congo, 2013, Scene #5370 © Alex Majoli / Magnum Photos Pointe Noire. Political gathering with local government members.
  • © Alessandro Zoboli
  • China, Shenzhen, 2017, Scene #1350 © Alex Majoli / Magnum Photos The employees of a beauty parlour participate in a pep rally before starting work.
  • Greece, Lesbos, 2015, Scene #0302 © Alex Majoli / Magnum Photos Northern shores of Lesbos island.
  • © Alessandro Zoboli
  • Republic of Congo, 2013, Scene #9928 © Alex Majoli / Magnum Photos Brazzaville stadium, with Red devils supporters.
  • © Alessandro Zoboli
  • Greece, Athens, 2016, Scene #0462 © Alex Majoli / Magnum Photos A Golden Dawn member singing the Greek national anthem.

Europe, Asia, Brazil, Congo. For eight years, across continents and countries, Alex Majoli has photographed events and non-events.

Political demonstrations, humanitarian emergencies and quiet moments of daily life. What holds all these disparate images together, at first glance at least, is the quality of light and the sense of human theatre. A sense that we are all actors attempting, failing and resisting the playing of parts that history and circumstance demand; and a sense that we are all interconnected. Somehow.

Majoli’s photographs result from his own performance. Entering a situation, he and his assistants slowly go about setting up a camera and lights. This activity is a kind of spectacle in itself, observed by those who may eventually be photographed. Majoli begins to shoot, offering no direction to people who happen to be in their own lives before his camera. This might last twenty minutes, or even an hour or more. Sometimes the people adjust their actions in anticipation of an image to come, refining their gestures in self-consciousness. Sometimes they are too preoccupied with the intensity of their own lives to even notice. Either way, the representation of drama and the drama of representation become one.

˝We must not derive realism as such from particular existing works, but we shall use every means, old and new, tried and untried, derived from art and derived from other sources, to render reality to men in a form they can master [...]. Our concept of realism must be wide and political, sovereign over all conventions.˝ — Bertolt Brecht

Most of Alex Majoli’s photographs were made during daylight, and he could have easily photographed his scenes with no additional illumination. Flash was not a matter of necessity; it was a choice, an interpretive, responsive choice. Alex Majoli uses very strong flash lighting. It is instantaneous and much brighter than daylight. It illuminates what is near but plunges the surroundings into darkness, or something resembling moonlight. Spaces appear as dimly lit stages and, regardless of the ambient light that exists, everything seems to be happening at the sunless end of the day.

Alex Majoli’s approach to image making constitutes a profound reflection upon the conditions of theatricality that are implicit in both photography and a world we have come to understand as something that is always potentially photographable. If the world is expecting to be photographed, it exists in a perpetual state of potential theatre. In photographs we do not see people, we see people who have fulfilled their potential to be photographed. People in photographs strike us as both actual and fictional at the same time. Actual in that their presence before the camera has been recorded; fictional in that the camera has created a scenic extract from an unknowable drama.

The illusionism of photography is inseparable from the contemplation of its illusion. This does not negate the documentary potential of the image although it does imply that documentary itself ought to accept the theatricality of its own premise. His images do this not by resolving the tensions between artwork and document but by dramatizing them, making them thinkable in the midst of our pictorial and documentary encounter with the contemporary world.

- David Campany

 

Alex Majoli – Scene | LE BAL |Du 22 février au 28 avril 2019, from LE BAL on Vimeo.

© Matthieu Samadet, sounds, music and video

Biography

From the age of 15, Alex Majoli becomes apprentice in the photo studio F45 in Ravenne, notably specialised in the reproduction of artworks from the great Italian painting. Graduated from the Art Institute of Ravenne in 1991, he joins Grazia Neri agency for which he covers the yugoslav conflict for several years.

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For the exhibition, and within the context of the performance cycle Watch and Act, LE BAL offered a first invitation to six artists (choreographers, dancers and performers) to produce a work of art based on an image.
Writer, reviewer, and scholar Corinne Rondeau proposes two days of reflection on the theme ‘What is escaping from the light?’ March 14 and April 18 at 8PM.

Curators: David Campany and Diane Dufour
A book co-edited by LE BAL and MACK, ALEX MAJOLI- SCENE, is published on the occasion of the exhibition.
Exhibition organised in collaboration with the Ravenna Art Museum and Magnum Photos with the support of the Instituto italiano di cultura.
With the kind support of the Howard Greenberg Gallery.
Media partners: Art Press, France Culture, i-D Magazine, L’Œil de la Photographie, Polka Magazine, Slash/, Télérama

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Watch & Act

Performance cycle around the exhibition

From Thursday March 21 to Thursday April 25, 2019 - 8 PM

What is escaping from the light ?

Two days of reflection coordinated by Corinne Rondeau

Thursday March 14 and Thursday April 18 - 8 PM

Sand in the Eyes

Rabih Mroué

Thursday March 21, 2019 - 8 PM

Par la mer

Dorothée Munyaneza

Thursday March 28, 2019 - 8 PM

Point(s) de fuite

Afshin Ghaffarian

Thursday April 4, 2019 - 8 PM

Longing

Alexandre Roccoli

Thursday April 11, 2019 - 8 PM

YOURS

Performance

Thursday April 5, 2019 - 8PM

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