BEING THERE
© Omar Victor Diop x The Anonymous Project
This book is a jubilant collaboration: director Lee Shulman, creator of The Anonymous Project, asked Senegalese self-portraitist Omar Victor Diop to slip into the anonymous photographs in his collection of American slides from the 1950s and 1960s.
Work of staging and re-assembling of the images orchestrated by Shulman, the series revisits in about sixty works the archetypes of the Trente Glorieuses society.
These augmented pictures question the foundations of our contemporary society. By repairing absence, Being There opens a conversation on our history.
These are images of ordinary celebrations, in which privileged white middle-class families are seen posing at the table to celebrate a birthday, at the beach, in the middle of a barbecue or in front of their gleaming pavilion.
In this way, Diop intrudes into worlds where he was not invited, in the context of post-war segregated America, as if he had always been part of the setting. Shulman and Diop propose a new way of stirring minds and questioning representations, with humour. Their performance acts as an eye-opener.
click to view all the images in the story
Éditions TexTuel