DAHMANE, PHOTOMONTAGES, 2003-2016.
Claude Lemand.
During 2015-2016, the Galerie Claude Lemand opened its doors to the world of contemporary photography for the first time and committed to promoting four Parisian artists, including the French photographer DAHMANE, born in 1959, who fuses a great creativity with a vast pictorial culture and who produced from 2001 onwards some striking photomontages from his own photographs.
Jean-Louis Poitevin.
The digital technology of the 21st century opened a new door for Dahmane and enabled him to play with other images whilst at the same time, attributing a new force to his rash love for perfection of detail. The long hours spent on the bodies and decors allow him to confront more his second passion, that of composition. Each of his photographs are truly and absolutely composed. What does this mean ? That the game he plays at, the provocation of love he produces, the shock between longing and desiring that he provokes, are all subject to his absolute taste for a strict balance, the same that has obsessed painters for centuries. For him, taking photographs is therefore being loyal the great classical culture that his parents had exposed him to and that he venerates.
It was also expected that he paid tribute and amused himself in confronting the great masters, by integrating his own characters. In his most recent body of work, in which he quotes Old Master paintings, he does not plagiarize as he reveals the part of the unaccomplished dream emerging from these masterpieces. The female body is often celebrated in these works. By introducing young women from today’s world, he voids the passing of time and opens a gateway for us towards an eternal present. Each of these pieces pays homage to beauty. Each of Dahmane’s works is not only a tribute to art and its history, but also a celebration of a new union, that brightens us up every time the threads of time converge in us with a braid of clean lines, forming a complete statue in which our visions and dreams are interwoven.
Translated from French by Valérie Didier Hess
