"In the current context, where the boundary between what is real and what isn’t is increasingly ambiguous (e.g. fake news, alternative facts, infotainment, AI generated imagery…), it seems more pertinent than ever to reflect on our relation to reality and how this is mediated through images."
Artist: Henri Kisielewski
Project: Non Fiction
One of our jury's favorite project, from the October 2023 opencall.
" "To give truth the colour and narrative force of fiction", this was Truman Capote’s ambition when he wrote ‘In Cold Blood’, the true account of a quadruple homicide in 1960s Kansas. This is the starting point for "Non Fiction", a work of lyrical documentary that explores the porous boundary between fact and fiction in photography.
Since its beginnings, photography has had a complex relation to truth: even the most ‘objective’ portraits will necessarily involve decisions relating to location, light and pose. In "Non Fiction", this tension is pushed to its extreme through a variety of visual strategies e.g. staging, off-camera flash, subverting cinematic clichés. Images based on rumours, local news stories and chance encounters accumulate and coalesce, to form a narrative that is fluid and multidirectional. Framed in this way, daily life is transformed: every window hides secrets, every person becomes a protagonist, every object becomes a clue or a piece of evidence."
"Everything is real, everything is fake, but one thing is for certain: fact is at least as strange as fiction.
In the current context, where the boundary between what is real and what isn’t is increasingly ambiguous (e.g. fake news, alternative facts, infotainment, AI generated imagery…), it seems more pertinent than ever to reflect on our relation to reality and how this is mediated through images.
The project was made across Normandy in 2022 during an extended residency organised by the ‘Planches Contact’ photography festival in Deauville, France. It was exhibited at Les Franciscaines museum, France, at in Cadaqués international photo festival, Spain, and recently won the first prize of Photo Marseille’s “Prix Maison Blanche”. Non Fiction will be published as my first monograph in September 2024 by Le Bec en L’Air editions."
© Henri Kisielewski