josef chladek

on photobooks and books

Antoine D'Agata - Stigma, Images En Manœuvre Editions, 2004, Marseille

Hardcover.

A dark and brooding photographic investigation into the less glamorous side of prostitution and the people and bodies that occupy this world. In his accompanying text Philippe Azoury captures the atmosphere found in these images succinctly; In the obscure darkness where flesh, words and thought disappear in a pool of putrefaction, deviation and excess seem to have granted them special awareness of what it is to exist. Their voiceless cries express the unbearable feeling that their own existence has gone too far. The bare crudity of the human condition fixed on photograph. (from the publisher)

" D'Agata's impressionistic, romatic style - very different from most of his colleagues in Magnum - might seem to cut across this sense of urgency and desperation but in fact it enhances the sense of needy but joyless hedonism. This is sex accompanied by high anxiety, in a book that is highly poetic in a taut, nervous way." (Garry Badger in "The Photobook: A History volume III)

Pages: 48
Place: Marseille
Year: 2004
Publisher: Images En Manœuvre Editions
Size: 23 x 31 cm (approx.)