Ben Dauchez - Orientalist #1

Format 50X50 Unframed,

Thought of as a page from a travel notebook, the work takes as its starting point an original photograph by Ben Dauchezt to which elements are added that extend and transform the image. These interventions compose a narrative between memory, observation and imagination. In an approach inspired by Orientalism, the photograph thus becomes the medium of a personal evocation of travel, where the real mingles with reverie.

Format 50X50 Unframed, Ben Dauchez works his original photograph like a page of a travel notebook. Writings, graphic motifs and fragments of documents overlay the image, enriching the scene with traces and suggested narratives. The blacks, the ochres and the patinated reds evoke a materiality marked by time.

From Orientalist inspiration, this composition blends the photographic gaze and the imagination of travel. Through a playing with accumulations and erasures, it transforms the photographed moment into a recomposed memory, at the meeting of the real and the reverie.

Passionate about photography from a very young age, Ben DAUCHEZ began in the neighborhood studios of La Rochelle. There he acquired all the basics of photography—from classic technique, shooting and retouching, to the laboratory. At 22, freshly graduated, he moved to Paris to complete his training by becoming a set assistant for the Daguerre studios, Le Petit Oiseau va sortir and Studio Zéro. He had the chance to collaborate with and assist some of the most talented photographers: Bettina RHEIMS, Patrick DEMARCHELIER, Terry RICHARDSON, Ellen VON UNWERTH, Marcus MAM... From certain decisive encounters will arise beautiful projects and long collaborations, notably with André RAU, Bettina RHEIMS (the sulfurous exhibition INRI and its eponymous book at Editions Albin Michel) and Peter BEARD (Pirelli calendar 2009 in Botswana).

His photos are published, among others, by Condé Nast Editions (French and international), Première, Wallpaper, ID, Madame Figaro, Lifestyles, Dandy Magazine... His universe also appeals to brands with very different identity codes, for which he has signed the production of institutional and/or advertising campaigns such as Dior (beauty), L'Oréal, Peugeot, Philip Morris or Burger King (advertising awarded at the Dubai Lynx).

Ben DAUCHEZ has also produced numerous portraits of celebrities (IGGY POP, Woody HALLEN, Grace JONES, Jean DUJARDIN, Gilles LELLOUCHE, Olivier MARCHAL, Carole BOUQUET, Charlotte GAINSBOURG, ...) of beauty, of cosmopolitan men (Olivier DASSAULT, Jacques SEGUELA...) and of travelers...
This photographic path has since allowed him to freely immortalize the human, aesthetic and spiritual beauty of each personality.