Morocco film stills
(2011)
series of 32 photographs
6x8 cm archival pigment prints on Awagami Kozo White paper 70g
edition of 15 + 2 A.P.
This series consists of 32 photographs from screenshots of several short films that I made in Morocco in 2011. They are printed in 6x8 cm format on Japanese paper.
The film-still is at the threshold of photography (still image) and cinema (moving image), thus constituting what could be called a photo-filmic situation. These hybrid images show how the photographic act nestles in the heart of the cinematographic capture.
Cette série se compose de 32 photographies issues de captures d’écran de plusieurs court-métrages que j’ai réalisés au Maroc 2011. Elles sont tirées au format 6x8 cm sur papier japonais.
L’arrêt-sur-image se trouve au seuil de la photographie (image fixe) et du cinéma (image mouvante), constituant ainsi ce qu’on pourrait appeler une situation photo-filmique. Ces images hybrides montrent comment l’acte photographique se niche au cœur du cinématographique.
« Through their minimalism, the images of the series Morocco film stills evoke photographic snapshots as much as poems. These are screenshots taken from short films that Marco Barbon has shot himself. Images of images giving primacy to illusion over mimesis. The illusion here is to confuse time, then to merge time into space and vice versa.
The portraits, scenes, landscapes of Morocco film stills are those of Morocco today ; they nevertheless give the impression that they are timeless. The emotion they arouse is that of a vague nostalgia for the lost or that of a suspended time-world.
An emotion probably due to the blur that veils these photographs and almost substract them to our glaze »
(excerpt from the text by Abdelghani Fennane)
Show at Galerie Delacroix, Tangier / June 3rd - September 15th 2023
curator : Abdelghani Fennane
