DAMIEN DAUFRESNE, PHOTOGRAPHER AND PAINTER
Galerie Leica in Paris is exhibiting black and white photographs and drawings from the book Undertow, published by Blow Up Press (BUP) in 2023.
Damien Daufresne has been doing both for as long as he can remember. Over the years, his photographs and drawings have come together to form a long visual poem that has been compiled in a magnificent book. You will discover a selection of travel images and family photos alongside the abstraction of charcoal drawings.
Damien Daufresne (born in Paris in 1979) studied drawing and painting, printmaking, photography and video in New York at the School of Visual Arts and in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, from which he graduated in 2003.
He has lived in Berlin since 2006.
His inspirations are many and change according to the people he meets and the things he likes. It was during an internship at Magnum at the age of 15 that it all began; he discovered Koudelka, HCB and Marc Riboud, who were his first teachers and his school. Then came Robert Franck, the Japanese photographers of the Provok movement, Christer Strömholm, Michael Ackerman, Sarah Moon, Joan Colom and Helen Levitt, but his deepest artistic inspiration has always been painting and drawing (the Italian primitives, Goya, Rembrandt, then Giacometti, Bram van Velde and De Kooning, to name but a few).
These works, which have left their mark on him, are part of his relationship with the world; they have become a filter through which he looks at reality and, of course, create links and feed the dialogue that is the driving force behind his way of working. There is no claim, but rather a kind of summons or invitation.
Damien Daufresne
He tries to develop a style of writing that eschews anecdote, event and information. However fleeting the trigger for a photograph may be, he focuses on what moves him and can remain timeless. Something that is archetypal and leaves room for mystery.
Damien Daufresne has always drawn and photographed in parallel. For a long time, he was afraid to confront these two means of expression.
In 2018, he was invited to exhibit in Toulouse by Ingrid Coumes-Marquet, who runs the espace Saint Cyprien, and wanted to show all his work, including drawings, photos and films. Since then, photography and drawing have been used in a dialogue on the walls, without there being any systematism.
Leica Gallery Paris
26 rue Boissy d'Anglas
75008 PARIS
France
10.00 am to 7.00 pm