Landscapes frozen in an endless winter, emptied of any human presence. A silhouette wandering in the streets of a city, as if escaped from a theater scene… In color or in black and white, Stéphane Duroy’s photographs impose themselves on the viewer’s gaze, loaded with the weight of absence, evoking the silent crash of a world in fragments, and the poetry of disenchantment.
For more than forty years, Stéphane Duroy has traveled throughout Europe and the United States in search of the tragedies that shaped the 20th century and their consequences on individuals. Initially working as a photojournalist, he gradually detached himself from documentary to devote himself to the elaboration of a demanding work, published in a dozen books. One of them, entitled Unknown, published in 2007, has become in recent years the support of new explorations, straddling photography, collage and drawing.
“Photography, And Then...” offers a rereading of this unusual journey, through a selection of photographs from his different series, made in Berlin, Great Britain or Montana, mixed with unique copies of his book Unknown #2, as well as recent acrylic paintings. The ensemble traces the contours of a production constantly questioned and reinterpreted.
“I don’t respect photography, I desecrate it completely and use it as a brush, paint, stencil, letter or word.” Stéphane Duroy
