Out of the two major photographic series presented in the Château galleries, the British artist Darren Almond provides us with a reflection on the notions of time and continuance, and also of memory – individual and historical alike.
In Fullmoon, the artist uses landscape as his main subject. Punctuated by continual references to painting (Constable, Turner, Talbot, Friedrich, et al.), this series of photographs taken at the dead of night and exposed to moonlight for 15 minutes each, delivers a range of unexpected images, all of them astonishing in their luminosity and remarkable poetic power.
The Night + Fog series was taken on the icy plains of northern Siberia. The dozens of photographs which comprise it picture petrified forests, austere charred trees, their shapes standing out on snow-covered landscapes, apparently devoid of any trace of humanity.
Biographical notes
Darren ALMOND
GREAT BRITAIN
Although born in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, David Almond finds his inspiration abroad. Using such diverse techniques as installations, sculpture and photography, the artist never ceases to examine our relationship with time and memory as he questions probes the possible materialisation of the phenomenon of continuance. Faraway regions, often no easy matter to get to, such as the source of the Nile or the Siberian plains, have enabled him to capture virgin landscapes, as if they existed beyond the reach of time. Since 1998, Darren Almond has also put together a series of photographs which are no less striking, Fullmoon, a number of which will be exhibited at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire in 2012.
