[ad_1]
The war in Syria remains largely painless and abstract in its brutality towards the West. The award-winning images of Swiss photographer Matthias Bruggmann want to change that. The Musée de l'Elysée shows it in a provocative exhibition.
Al-Shirqat, Iraq, September 22, 2016. Activists from Hashd al-Shabbi detonated a car that they suspected of being prepared for a bomb attack by the IS, which controlled the city until a few hours ago. (Image: Matthias Bruggmann / Press images / Musée de l'Elysée / Polaris Gallery)
This allusion is bizarre, but it expresses a distorted reality: a small sign warns young people and uninformed visitors when entering the museum: The following, respect, could bring them into distress. Anyone visiting this exhibition may be hurt in their perception that the content is "likely to offend sensitivity".
And if a visit to the museum of the Elysee did not let you really go? S? It even evokes lasting discomfort, what would it be?
The museum becomes a morgue
The exhibition, in which visitors are neatly wrapped in cotton wool by the host, titled "An act of unspeakable violence", an indescribable act of violence. And the violence shown here is violence against people, as they have been in Syria since 2012.
Industrial Zone, Deir al-Zur, May 5, 2015. A military-level fighter oversees a position of the Islamic State. The more than 100,000 civilians of Deir al-Zur were now under double siege – that of the regime on one side and that of the Islamic State. (Image: Matthias Bruggmann / Press images / Musée de l'Elysée / Polaris Gallery)
The images of the Syrian war must find an echo in a museum. It's crazy, in the sense of being postponed: The conflicts lasted for years with the media – and now, a photo museum is looking for an audience! But the hope of success is justified: the photographer Matthias Bruggmann shows in addition complex representations of Syrian daily life as well as something that requires shelter – namely unfiltered violence.
The museum displays war images that are unlikely to attract audiences in a small number of other spaces. It is the representation of indescribable barbarism. But the voyeur will not be able to detect it. The images have the power to fill a room as silent witnesses.
The corpses, the different parts of the body, the blood and the devastation. The photographer from Lausanne does not comment, he documents. His deaths in Syria are recognized and respected by the public in the museum hall. But in the end, it is not the deceased who deserve to be mourned, it is the survivors who should take care of us. These are the orphans that the photographer meets in the emergency rooms and the little ones in the ruins of their future.
Al-Shirqat and Zawiya, Iraq, September 24, 2016. Fighters of the pro-government militia Hashd al-Shababi pause during an offensive to take selfies with the body of a man who was killed by an air strike alleged American a few minutes earlier had been killed and suspected to have been a fighter of the Islamic State. (Image: Matthias Bruggmann / Press images / Musée de l'Elysée / Polaris Gallery)
There is probably no more newspaper, the pictures of this kind are still waiting for their readers. This task of information is supported by an art museum and deserves to be recognized. Julie Maillard shows the disillusioned Syrian horror on the white walls – she informs, who expects the art to find life.
Because the Syrian drama is ours too. It is our own moral and intellectual failure before a regime whose barbarity knows no boundaries – and whose propaganda can count on a reliable human constant: our comfort.
Al-Shirqat, September 22, 2016. A man suspected of belonging to the Islamic State. He is accused of having murdered three members of the men who now hold him. You do not know if he was released the next morning. (Image: Matthias Bruggmann / Press images / Musée de l'Elysée / Polaris Gallery)
Al-Rabia, Hama Province, April 23, 2012. Dirk Bakir, military security fighter, with his daughter at home. The men of Al-Rabia say they fear mass killings if the surrounding villages, friends of the insurgents, take control of the region. (Image: Matthias Bruggmann / Press images / Musée de l'Elysée / Polaris Gallery)
The testimonials, the testimonies of critics of the regime, the push notifications, are all unknown in the West. Where empathy should be, there is amnesia. The Belgian historian Marie Peltier, for example, who has been dealing with Asad propaganda in Syria since 2012, speaks of a collective ostracism of Western society. Experts now agree: The West has lost the war.
The bankruptcy of the Western world is a moral fiasco. But it hurts, only and at best, its own vanity, defeat has undermined our former sense of superiority. Having lost the war in an existential way, but has the Syrian civilian population.
Idlib, February 20, 2013. Two men mourn the death of their beheaded brother by an army grenade. The fear of bombing has become so great that families no longer hold public funerals. (Photo: Matthias Bruggmann / Press Contact Images Musée de l'Elysée / Polaris Gallery)
Working in Syria has become virtually impossible for Western photographers. even for them, the risk is too great. Almost no image reaches us outside the country, nor too many people reach us, always the same from the point of view of the various parties, the resistance fighters, the militants or the army. The combination of pro-government and anti-government groups and groups is unstable, but they share a common goal: their images are information as a means to an end. Matthias Bruggmann does an extraordinary job in this area of the fronts.
Lausanne works in the intermediate zone, which combines photojournalism with contemporary art. He has been photographing in Syria since 2012 and intends to use his complex work to make the complexity of the conflict understandable for an audience: After all, there is no longer a round, unbroken social tableau operating according to a universally valid system of rules. The objectivist vision is the first loser, especially in the war.
Bombing for the west
For example, if bombs fall on a suburb of Damascus near Bruggmann on August 3, 2017, they will be directly targeted at viewers. The photographer shows the decor of a propaganda film – located in the real rubble of the Daraja War -, the scandalous story of a Western photographer who staged a chemical attack. The film was destined for the West and had been commissioned by the president of the Syrian Parliament of the time.
Near Homs, September 11, 2013. Pool at the Al Khair Hotel above Marmarita. Some of the young men photographed here belong to the Christian militia Usul al-Wadi, which besieges Krak of the Knights (one of the best preserved temples and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Templars) and the Sunni village built around the fortress. (Image: Matthias Bruggmann / Press images / Musée de l'Elysée / Polaris Gallery)
The complexity of reality is Bruggmann's apparent idyll in the fortress of Homs rebels. If the photo is bathed in a seductive blue pool by young men bathing in lounge chairs and a nap, this can be interpreted in different ways: it is a propaganda for a Syrian daily life that works as well as an advertisement for a spa with special foresight in the surrounding area. The statement is in the eye of the viewer. The photograph itself is ambiguous like reality.
In fact, bathers are members of pro-government Christian militias. They conquered the hotel grounds and relax by the pool to listen to music while bombs fall nearby.
But what characterizes the history of the painting is the drama in the background: bathers sit in the landscape where, in the thirteenth century, the French king Louis IX. fought unsuccessfully during his armed crusade against Muslims. The smoke clouds at the back of the bathers emerge from a historic war theater, one of Ludwigs' strategic fortresses. History repeats itself and it learns as little as we do.
Source link
