The Galerie Nathalie Obadia is very pleased to hold a new solo exhibition by Luc Delahaye. On this occasion the photographer is presenting a set of ten works that he has produced since 2011.

With these photographs, Luc Delahaye has continued his observations on the representation of the condition of man in the contemporary world. Employing both precision and freedom, he carries forward his pursuit of images that both declare their autonomy and transcend their photographic nature.

This quest is above all the restless wandering of one who, by his impersonal presence, inclines towards awareness of the world. With regard to war, it takes him towards a more ordinary and more open reality: that of an Indian village, a suburb of Athens or a financial institution. It has also prompted him to broaden his modus operandi: whereas a documentary approach remains central to his work, he is now also prepared to integrate certain artifices usually linked to fiction.

Thus, of the four photographs taken in the Indian village, two are classic documentary images taken directly from real life (Coal Gleaner, The Tree), another is the recreation of a scene witnessed during a previous visit (Father and Daughter), and the last (Boys Fighting) is the creation – using “actors” – of an imaginary situation. Another example, taken in a very different domain, Trading Floor is a digital composition made from images taken from life on the Metals Trading Floor in London. Death of a Mercenary and House to House, both taken in Libya during the war of 2011, have more in common with Luc Delahaye’s earlier works.

An exhibition is a moment in the production of an artist, part of an overall whole that is in constant definition, and the variety of approaches and subjects that he has presented here in just a few photographs probably represents a desire to cover all the possibilities available to him. In its own way, each image in the exhibition is stamped with the motifs characteristic of his previous work, which invariably revolves around the dialectical interplay of false opposites: distant-present, archetypal-remarkable, beautiful-cruel, manifest-enigmatic. And a picture, this image-object, is the space wherein these dimensions are welcomed and contained.

Born in 1962, Luc Delahaye lives and works in Paris.