Talashi.
EXB Workshop / Editions Xavier Barrat| N° d'inventaire | 25043 |
| Format | 16.5 x 23.5 |
| Détails | 128 p., 55 color photographs, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2021 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782365113182 |
How can we evoke a tragedy made paradoxically invisible by too many images?
Photographer Alexis Cordesse, a veteran of war zones, took the opposite tack by collecting the rare images he carried into exile, in a suitcase, on a cell phone, which bear witness to the memory of uprooted lives. Fleeing Syria while taking personal images with you is a risk: if arrested, the photographs are seized and analyzed. The people in them become suspects for the regime. In such a context, photography becomes dangerous. Through his encounters—more than a hundred in France, Germany, and Turkey between 2018 and 2020—Alexis Cordesse has written the stories of these vernacular photographs and those who entrusted them to him.
War is perceived differently, through the prism of the exile's words and the memory of the images he or she has chosen to keep. Photography as a tangible trace is put under tension: what does it tell us about the experience, what does it tell us about each person? Talashi speaks of the circulation of images through the experience of exile. These photographs have survived destruction and oblivion. Their presence speaks of the absence of those forever gone.
"Talashi is an Arabic word that can be translated as fragmentation, erosion, disappearance. Located in the off-screen space of news images, this work of reappropriation offers a sober and modest narrative, at the crossroads of the intimate and History."
Alexis Cordesse
How can we evoke a tragedy made paradoxically invisible by too many images?
Photographer Alexis Cordesse, a veteran of war zones, took the opposite tack by collecting the rare images he carried into exile, in a suitcase, on a cell phone, which bear witness to the memory of uprooted lives. Fleeing Syria while taking personal images with you is a risk: if arrested, the photographs are seized and analyzed. The people in them become suspects for the regime. In such a context, photography becomes dangerous. Through his encounters—more than a hundred in France, Germany, and Turkey between 2018 and 2020—Alexis Cordesse has written the stories of these vernacular photographs and those who entrusted them to him.
War is perceived differently, through the prism of the exile's words and the memory of the images he or she has chosen to keep. Photography as a tangible trace is put under tension: what does it tell us about the experience, what does it tell us about each person? Talashi speaks of the circulation of images through the experience of exile. These photographs have survived destruction and oblivion. Their presence speaks of the absence of those forever gone.
"Talashi is an Arabic word that can be translated as fragmentation, erosion, disappearance. Located in the off-screen space of news images, this work of reappropriation offers a sober and modest narrative, at the crossroads of the intimate and History."
Alexis Cordesse