Welcome to North Korea, the most closed country in the world… A subject of current matter as a nuclear arm-wrestling between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump takes place and a historic rapprochement between both Koreas is witnessed.
While the professional photographers are there normally unwelcomed, Stephan Gladieu was able to realize in 2017, but always under surveillance, portraits in the country of Kim Jong-un. In spite of the omnipresence of propaganda, he puts a very personal and human vision on the inhabitants of this country.
Of the commonness of the everyday life in North Korea, Stephan Gladieu knew how to capture the quintessence of the ideological and societal dimension of the most closed country in the world. In every harmless scene the power of the prohibition reveals itself and the unspoken transfixes. Every setting constitutes a fragment of a history under control and codes, making the propaganda visible and tangible … a Orwellien universe of another age and of a disturbing strangeness.
Where is the life, where stops the scenery…
Images which fascinate by their unreal look, too smooth to match reality or more exactly our reality, by their perfect execution cleaned of any imperfection, images too smooth to not discomfort the viewer.
In a country which counts 25 million people, where the behavior is closely controlled, the photographer knew how to bring the individuality in streets or work scenes. Sets are similar to those of a movie or a play as they are so «perfect», with most of the time in background propaganda images with the portrait of the supreme guide.
Taken alone, each portrait could be similar to a sweetened propaganda of this dictatorial regime. Considered as a whole, they have a disturbing uniformity. Gladieu considers that the subversion is in this repetition.
Here, the virtual and the reality are one, we are in front of a disproportionate human reality with all that it implies. The community utopia, an ideological engine of the XXth century, finds its outcome there: here everything is only a show, a simple show.
Exceptional portraitist, he delivers this serie and invites us to discover colourful pictures, in the borders of the genre painting and the surrealism. Each portrait is an ode to color, each face a hymn to the strangeness, each background a naturalistic theater. The group composes a multicolored enchantment, where the kitsch and the old fashioned, worker’s dress or military suit competes with the strangeness of the scenery, in the style of Epinal images re-colorized as to return them a little humanity.
His portraits have the strength to report with an infinite precision, of this augmented reality, where each people is at the same time an actor and a spectator. There, where the reality denies the individual, Gladieu managed to restore them a little humanity.
There is some Douanier Rousseau tinted with some Martin Parr in Gladieu’s latest photos
A wonderland erects at the top of an alimentary factory, where workers can swim, play basketball ou soothe in a sauna … mummywomen in parade outfits perform a peculiar ballet, families or freezed couples take the pose in front of monuments of the propaganda of another time … everything is only unreality …the hammer, the sickle and the brush for callygraphy that we thought unbolted forever, rise such as the statue of the commander … just like to translate the prevailing unease and powerful official iconography of an era we thought over... they remain as many worker’s, farmer’s and intellectual’s alegories.
Stephan Gladieu starts from the real. His unwillingness of staging or faking the production’s conditionsde and the absence of choice of the moments and places for his pictures, incite him to adopt a clear and direct style, he lets the humanity with in the nonstandard unreality come out, he idealizes the setting alternating close up and middle range focus, large framing to create a singular scenery for every portrait...
His pictures stage the vastness of the urban landcapes and the disproportionate architecture, here everything is at the same time inert and alive, freezed as a statue, smooth and unexpressive faces with sometimes the glimpse of a smile that brings to life the picture and returns it a semblance of humanity.
The images organize themselves to create an album, where reality and unreality unite in a four colour process printing.
The photographer went two times in 2017 in this country that fascinates him, where he works in a very supervised way and under the constant supervision of guides. He give us to see a very personal vision.
Observing his subjects with a certain distance, Stephan Gladieu composes precise and striking shots. From nearly desertic and sterilized public spaces to portraits of isolated inhabitants in very soothed backgrounds, his images are half-way between the documentary and artistic photography
Stéphan Gladieu pushes back the borders the documentary and reporting picture to make it enter in the fiction field and confer it an artistic nearly pictorial dimension.
His unique sens of the image’s dramaturgy and staging allow him to reappropriate the natural setting to himslef and turn it into a narrative place. His energizing pictures, build the DNA of his whole last serie, in contrast with the dark and disturbing side of his past black and white productions realised when he used to be a war and news photographer.
No decorum or superfluous setting in these images that seem directly pulled out of a tall tale. Quite simple, life as it goes on the other side of the globe and allows to see to whom knows how to look... A great outdoor entertainment, seducing images, each one of them, retaining an amazing capability of reminder ...
Before hand the work of documentation and research is consederable and uncompromising. But the photographer’s point of view,and the angle with which Stephan Gladieu takes up his work, fix his pictures in the artistic field. There is the way the story is told, the choice of the protagonists, the empathy of the photographer ans his deep humanity that give trust to the subjects photographed. Fianlly there is the absolute aesthetic dimension of the image, or how to unite strength and vulnerability.
All his field experience as an international correspondent is necessary, this background so peculiar that favour him as a basis, to sign this new series... Essential condition to stick to the real. His photos are of an absolute realism, Stephan Gladieu knows how to capture the atmosphere and make it so real, that the viewer enters instantly in the setting of these singular stories.
Photography
Fine art print on Hahnemühle paper
Available in 2 editions
Big format edition of 8
edition 1/8 reserved to institutions edition 8/8 corresponds to the artist proof, numbered EA1 8/8
this edition includes 2 formats
80 x 100 cm (31,49 x 39,37 inch)
Edition GF 2/8 à GF 4/8
120 x 150 cm (63 x 78,74 inch)
Edition GF 5/8 à GF 7/8
Small Format 40 x 50 cm (15,75 x 19,68 inch) edition of 8
numbered PF 2/8 à PF 6/8
edition 1/8 reserved to institutions edition 7/8 NFT edition 8/8 corresponds to the artist proof, numbered EA1 8/8
Prices on demand depending on the format and the rank in the edition
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Figaroscope: http://www.lefigaro.fr/sortir-paris/2018/11/07/30004-20181107ARTFIG00108-paris-photo-tres-loin-des-cliches-etre-un-chasseur-d-images-a-paname.php
Figaro: http://www.lefigaro.fr/sortir-paris/2018/11/07/30004-20181107ARTFIG00051-paris-photo-2018-les-femmes-a-l-honneur.php
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2018/11/09/01003-20181109ARTFIG00002-les-nord-coreens-comme-vous-ne-les-avez-jamais-vus.php
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