Ana Claudia Oliveira Sousa DPFJ: Luc Delahaye

Luc Delahaye

"I was twenty when I discovered war and photography. I can’t say that I wanted to bear witness and change the world. I had no good moral reasons: I just loved adventure, I loved the poetry of war, the poetry of chaos, and I found that there was a kind of grace in weaving between the bullets." Luc Delahaye

Luc Delahaye is a photographer born in Tours, France in 1962. Today, he lives and works in Paris. Delahaye, in his early 20s, first started his career as a photojournalist – which is, as well, his main work field – although, currently, he directed his career more towards art photography. In the mid-1980s he joined the photo agency Sipa Press, when then he started devoting himself to war reporting. Later on, in 1994 he joined the Newsweek Magazine and also became a member of Magnum Photos – from which he has left already in 2004.

Luc Delahaye is famous for his work portraying real-life conflicts and social issues. In the 1990s he became well known for his reports of the wars in Rwanda, Chechnya, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Bósnia. Delahaye produced a small book called Memo at the end of his work in Bosnia. The book comprised 80 harsh photos copied from the obituary pages of the daily newspaper in Sarajevo. Another series, he has engaged with, is a project called Portraits/1 in which he tried to remove himself as much as he could from the process of taking the picture. He randomly asked homeless he encountered on the Parisian metro to let him take some pictures of them. On the next project, called L'Autre, he went even further in this attempt of driving himself away of the act of taking the picture. He secretly photographed other people on the subway using a hidden camera – the final images would contain only the face of the person and a part of the subway. Another work of Delahaye is Winterreise – he travelled to Russia to depict the social consequences of the country’s economic crisis. Delahaye’s next projects were Une Ville, History and most recent Luc Delahaye 2006 – 2010. Delahaye has received numerous awards including the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2005), Press Photo first prizes (2003, 1994, 1993) Prix Niepce (2002), Robert Capa Gold Medal (2002, 1993), ICP Infinity Award (2001) and the Oskar Barnack Award (2000).

Winterreise

Delahaye has a ‘documentary’ approach towards his subjects. His photography is often characterized by its rawness, straightness and a ‘detachment’ of his presence from the scene. Which can be better explained in his quote “I am cold and detached, sufficiently invisible because sufficiently insignificant, and that is how I arrive at a full presence to things, and a simple and direct relation to the real. That idea, in my work, is central.” Luc Delahaye work’s is often shown in large-formats in museums; composing and documenting history.

In my opinion, Luc Delahaye’s work is quite impressive. What most caught my attention was the thin line between art and photojournalism that we can easily find on his pictures. I do think his photos serve the photojournalism, in its most deeply essence, of reporting and documenting history as it is happening, to the people who are not able to physically witness those conflicts, however I also think they go beyond that – breaking patterns of war photography. In his pictures we are also able to find the beauty of art. It is almost like a paint, where the object photographed was posing for its painter, giving the best and most realistic expression he or she could give, on the right time, until the paint is fully complete. I have to admit that this interwoven connection of art and journalism exposes his work to a high level of controversial points and criticism concerning the nature of his work as a journalist. Nevertheless, I think one point doesn’t have to exclude the other, as photography, in whatever genre the photo might belong, is above all art and always portrays one’s single point of view. Therefore, we can never obtain full objectivity and we can never separate aesthetics from photography. Another point I must comment on is his invisibility and detachment from the object portrayed while taking the picture. The objects photographed seem to never notice Delahaye. Thus, allowing him to keep the most authenticity of the moment into his photos. I believe the best examples are in his book called Winterreise where he witnesses very intimate moments of ordinary people and they allow him to come inside of their private lives and portray it as it is. Throughout his entire work the photography I most liked is the one of the dead Taliban soldier – it is a very intriguing photo, especially because of the perspective from where the photo was taken. Even though it was taken in a very rough context I can say that it is a very beautiful photo.