Exhibition:

1001 Nights, by Antione d'Agata

The title comes from the classic Arabian adventure, and although presented as a narrative, the similarities between the two seem to begin and end there. Two large collages, resembling negative strips, span the entire length of the walls of the first room in the FOAM Gallery, Amsterdam.

A closer look reveals a seemingly random piecing together of various black and white and colour prints related by their blurred and grainy texture. Scenes of drug use, prostitution and nudity are juxtaposed with barren yet beautiful landscapes.

These scenes are the result of d’Agata’s wanderings through the streets of Amsterdam, Paris and Cologne, recording and experiencing what the night has to offer. The images are captured with a hand-held camera without an artificial light source, producing the blurred and sometimes unrecognisable shapes that the naked bodies take on. Viewing the few explicitly sexual scenes leads to a questioning of the photographer’s presence.

The exhibition’s second room provokes an entirely different impression. Framed images are lined up floor to ceiling. Many photographs are repeated from the first room, yet when viewed within this entirely dissimilar context they resemble less of a narrative; the four chaotic walls leave you struggling to focus on one image at a time. The effect is shocking and claustrophobic.
Viewing the exhibition becomes, then, a confronting experience, as intense as d’Agata’s own. Its success lies in its ability to demand reactions as direct and evocative as its subject matter. LH