tion. For Jinkyun Ahn the linear nature of photography resembles the way a family’s legacy is passed down from one generation to the next. Just as an image trav els from the lens to a negative, and from a negative to a print, the unique qualities and traits of his parents have been transferred to Jinkyun Ahn, leaving an indel ible imprint. He photographs his parents in carefully choreographed performances, making use of mirrors, reflections and doublings. The individual photographs are presented in well-considered linear order as links in a chain, addressing the unavoidability of family ties, the unbridgeable distance between the seen and the eye, mortality and the nature of photography.
foam magazine # 36 talent
Thibault Brunet Brunet’s work is a photographic investigation inspired by the topic of reality and its imitations. Thibault Brunet focuses on virtual universes, and on images of pretence, fakes and look-alikes. By developing alternative tech niques for taking pictures he aims to create ambiguities of genre, for instance by drawing upon the universes of video games, inspired as they are by American popu lar, historical and political culture. The games involve accomplishing missions: murder, blackmail, theft and escape, enemy liquidation, bombing, even the occupa tion of territories such as parts of Afghanistan. All the pictures presented here were taken over the course of his walks in these virtual universes. First Person Shooter was produced during a ‘training session’ in an American camp in Afghanistan. Brunet took pictures of soldiers he met from close up, then from further away. He broke open those synthetic faces, looking for light. All the elements of the reality of war are here, but we can sense a strange sensitivity in the looks. The marks of horror and suffering are on the soldiers’ faces, yet beyond this hyper-realistic anthropomorphism, we can also detect a vague sort of indifference.
Sohei Nishino By painstakingly cutting and pasting thousands of pho tographic particles, Sohei Nishino creates a mesmer izing artificial metropolis. The creation of a Diorama Map takes place as follows. He walks around the cho sen city on foot, shooting from various location with film, then pastes and arranges an enormous mound of pieces. Compiled from thirteen cities, Diorama Map is still ongoing and will be developed in cities all over the world in the future. Nishino reinvests cities with won der, and far from incidentally he cites eighteenth-cen tury cartographer Inō Tadataka, who also carried out his surveys on foot, as an influence. Streets bustle, buildings tilt and sway. The Cubists would have adored these maps: we look up while looking down; we look down and see the sky. Nishino’s maps remind us that cities, for all their giddy chaos, are essentially miracu • lous human achievements.
All images from the series How to be a photographer in 4 lessons © Thomas Vanden Driessche At the start of 2012, an old photo booth film machine was installed in Brussels in a cultural venue situated close to the home of Thomas Vanden Driessche. In the style of Topor, Thomas decided to use this medium and its constraints to narrate through strips of 4 images, stories about the small world of photography that he had become familiar with over several years. This project will be published by André Frère Editions in the form of a fac-simile booklet. The book launch will take place at Paris Photo in November 2013. Thomas Vanden Driessche (b. 1979, Belgium) is a freelance photographer and a member of the Out of Focus group. Rewarded with five PX3 awards in 2010-2011, his work has received a double nomination to the Pictet Prize 2013 and was among the finalists of the Bourse du Talent and the Manuel Rivera Ortiz Grant for documentary photography in 2013. His work has been displayed recently in international festivals around Europe. In 2011 Thomas Vanden Driessche was a member of the Jury of the Humanitarian Visa d’Or. He currently lives and works in Brussels.
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