Spur of the moment (1996) - Over a period of nine days, Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel and I took 10,000 photographs of the city of Stockholm during its popular Water Festival, which we exhibited, little by little as they were produced, at three different sites simutaneously: at the Moderna Museet, in a stand set up in the middle of the Water Festival and on the Web site of the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, using it as a dairy of our experiences.
For this exhausting commission we thought of our work as a personal form of mass media. We tried to detect emerging themes, photograph them, and organize and distribute these images as quickly and as well as we could. By transposing a photojournalistic model within our respective pratices, we sought to reduce the important temporal gap between the moment of production and that of distribution, which often characterizes a traditional exhibition. The urgency to show our discoveries was facilitated by a one-hour photo lab.
As “photo-journalists”, improvisation became the rule, implying a necessity for spur of the moment analysis of the unfolding events. In order to uncover some sort of meaning within this increasing mass of images, different presentation and archival systems were tested and improved upon during the nine days of our intervention. In contrast to a daily newspaper with its static thematic sections and headings used for organizing information, we wanted to establish a give and take, with our photos indicating possible categories and in turn, these new classification schemes pointing the way towards new subjects. As the exhibited material was replaced by new information it was catalogued in binders for future reference. At the end of our action, the organizational systems settled in, adapting to this information flow, fitting the particularities of this popular event.
Exhibitions
- Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, 1996
- Water Festival, Stockholm, Sweden, 1996
- The Internet site of the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, 1996
Texts
- Nathalie Boulouch (in French)
Enretien, Le Bulletin de la Société Française de Photographie, n° 7, Février 2000
Invitation
