Laurence Demaison Photographs Are Very Dark And Twisted

moray mair | Photography | September 18, 2012

Laurence Demaison‘s photographs are mostly self portraits – very dark, twisted ones. Despite what you may think her images are not the result of post -production digital manipulation. No. Rather Demasion works as all photographers once did, in analogue, using the art of light, speed and the darkroom to create incredible images. Demaison seems interested in both the image – in all its distorted, reflected, refracted glory – and the act of photography itself, the technique, the concept, playing with exposure times, letting chance take a hold of the final image, drawing over the negatives and so on. The work, without a doubt, reminiscent of Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy.

Here’s what Former New York Times Photo Critic, A.D. Coleman said about Demaison’s work:

One set of images is composed of time exposures registering carefully orchestrated performances for the camera, during which Demaison creates representations of the outlines and surface of her body with layered, multiple exposures of her own hands. These read as both traces of a performance and the sort of simultaneous fluid yet frozen moments to which Butoh dance aspires.

From a strictly imagistic standpoint, Demaison approaches the process of photographic picture-making as an occasion for extraordinary formal invention. From a conceptual standpoint, she treats the photographic negative (and the resulting print) as a stage for the performance of an action invisible to the eye, often one of considerable duration by conventional standards.