W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #lucdelahaye, #opecheadquarters, #thepress, #prixpictet

When Luc Delahaye made his museum and gallery debut in the early 1990s, I was his dealer.  Luc came to my attention when he received the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award in Photojournalism for his project “Winterreise”, capturing the desperate conditions: physical and emotional in Eastern Russia in the late 1980s.  Watching a video of the images I was making a sound like keening, a quiet primal roaring, an empathic visceral engagement with the work.  The program ended and I was in front of Luc insisting that he come back to New York so he could have a show with me.  

It becomes a longer story, but a very decent collaboration resulted, very much highlighted by the publication in a magazine of his image of a dead Taliban soldier lying horizontal in a ditch.  The work got a great deal of attention with a lot of extraneous and not very interesting conversations about appropriateness.  Delahaye printed his works large —- almost three meters wide.  They are formidable.  

The genius of the work was to some extent — and this is something I haven’t seen commented on — his remove.  People wanted to relate to these works as news photos, as reportage, all action, but Mr. Delahaye is not a gunslinger, he is a sniper.  He sites the scene then appears to back up, rather than get closer.  He wants to viewer to have some space to more fully consider the event.  He doesn’t insist on your having a visceral response to things.  Go easy.  Consider.  See and reflect.  

The success of his OPEC photograph is his not only sly point of view away from the action but further his genius in reversing the action of the scene, emphasizing the mad scrum of photographers and journalists like a mad wave crashing against an embankment of more cool headed calmly seated economists.   

©2021

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