Recommended Art: Peeping Back
FEBRUARY 6 - MARCH 7, 2009
"For his solo exhibition at the gallery, Alain Declercq is showing Hidden Camera Obscura, a new series of photographs taken in New York last year. He crisscrossed Manhattan getting these images of some 70 sites where photography, precisely, is prohibited. These prisons, police stations, tunnels and bridges have had their security status raised since 9/11, so in order to take his forbidden pictures, Declercq built his own lo-tech pinhole camera by making a tiny aperture in a plastic box. He would then cut a piece of film, place it in the box, place this on the ground facing the location, and let the light in to print the negative.
The resulting photographs are often hazy, imprecisely framed, sometimes inadequately lit because of the fluctuating exposure times – everything draws attention to the crudeness of the homemade method. And yet with this very simple tool Declercq made a breach in the law, methodically stealing that which
is supposed to be hidden from the public gaze, yet exists at the heart of public space."
Galerie Loevenbruck
40 rue de Seine, 2 rue de l’Echaudé 75006 Paris, France
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