Antoine D’Agata

Magnum Photos- Antoine D’Agata

I can think of no photographer today who better characterizes new social documentary than Antoine D’Agata. D’Agata was actually taking courses at ICP in 199o while Larry Clark and Nan Goldin were there. All three share a raw insider viewpoint, but I believe only D’Agata is able to transcend and break out of documenting a “niche culture.” We watch as Clark gets older and his punk skate teens stay the same; or observe Goldin and her NYC gay club scene change as AIDS begins to ravage the community. Both these new social documentarians rely on their completely open access to these “niche” communities. D’Agata is able to achieve the same unfettered access trans-globally. From France to Mexico and all places in between, D’Agata has documented our secret selves. Often in the night, D’Agata records a carnal world of sex and flesh. Sparce backgrounds and blurred images lend a timeless and placeless quality to the images far

D’Agata’s newest series, “Below are Until the World No Longer Exists,” is some of his most sexual work. Contrast this with his most recent book Psychogéographie, published in France in 2005, a series of staged portraits. Fully clothed teens pose, small figures in their pre-gentrified Marseille neighborhood.

From D’Agata:

I try to distance myself from a certain type of documentary photography that often avails itself of symbols that are too easy to read and assimilate in order to present a complex reality in a balance that is endlessly discussed over and over between photography as an instrument of documentation and photography as being completely subjective. It isn’t the eye that photography poses on the world that interests me but its most intimate rapport with that world.

Marseille Untitled Lust Grid

Other Links
FotoFreo 2006 Exhibition: Antoine d’Agata


7 Responses to “Antoine D’Agata”  

  1. 1 Houwsy

    nice site

  2. 2 Lad

    Ahhh, Antoine, fucking and sucking his way around the world with underage girls and prostitutes. And to think, documentary photography used to be about showing the world’s problems, not being part off them.

  3. 3 Lad is a crochety old bastard

    Back in my day we used to win pulitzers photographing people covered in napalm, now that was solid journalism. None of this experiencing the reality of our subjects, oh no. we did it right by god. We flew into poor countries, photographed the sick without talking to them, and were back in Manhattan fast enough to put a picture of our subject up in a Chelsea gallery before they died.

  4. 4 antoine theother

    I agree with Lad, and the guy that called Lad an old bastard wants the freedom to abuse women.
    Antoine D’Agata goes around the world to do what he could not do legally in his country. He goes to areas where he can buy little girls and women whose self confidence are damaged by their harsh social conditions.
    He displayed avery disturbing movie in which he staged a tied up woman to who he tied up until her the ropes cut her flesh to the bones. One woman was injecting herself something and looked so messed up. Then he filmed her as she was screaming. She seemed so messed up that I wonder if she was conscious when he was videotaping her.
    He displayed the women and was careful to not to show his own face while videotaping. He called the video a pornographic diary. A diary is about the self but he removed himself to show the women. He wrote the women testimonies that were about rape, guilt, hating men and lots of pain.
    Yes, the testimonies are interesting. What is sad is the way he tortured the women causing them physical harm before he obtained what he wanted.
    He is using them to become famous. Unfortunately what he does is practice by many many more that support human trafficking. A lot of white Europeans and Americans go to developing countries and to Asia because the laws on those areas allow extreme levels of abuse against women. Of course the person that wrote before me wants the freedom to enjoy sexual images. We can find them in Internet and in other venues, even in art. It is all find if to obtain them we have the willing sober consent of the participants. I is also sad that sex was displayed in his work along with real torture, and that the torture was performed by the artist against his model/victim. Sex is beautiful and should be detached from guilt. It should not be used to cause harm. Yes, I am a woman and I am tired of been victimized. What about asking somebody to do the same to you Antoine and show it to us. Why do not experience it by yourself. Be on the other side and get a better understanding of the situation

  5. 5 lizor

    I agree with Lad and Antoine the other. I am sick of people using the shock of sexual exploitation and the cheap titillation of sex/violence to draw attention to themselves and it really makes me upset when this exploitive nonsense is called “art”.

    Our continued desensitization to images of women’s pain and the exploitation of the female body - our need for more extreme scenarios to be considered “transgressive” , a word I have come to find extremely tiresome, is truly depressing.

    It takes courage and strength of character to make things better, to help and not harm. I hope the world ignores this man and he disappears like so much trash.

  6. 6 Doktor

    wow. what kind of naiv selfabsobed criticism! YOu shoudl go ahead and criticize all this thrill seeking journalists and war photographers - they really are a cynic bunch, who dwell in death. In stead you come her with your crypto feminist anti sexual criticism. Antoine is the only interesting photographer at Magnum today

  1. 1 Raised By Wolves as a Non-Fictional Multi-Media Narrative at Sarah Wichlacz


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