Douglas Mandry – Équivalences

Douglas Mandry explores the photographic medium in the age of digitization and the technological acceleration that follows. Still using analog processes, his interventions on the image are done by hand, either by applying different historical photographic processes, or by physically cutting and pasting them. For the Unseen Sights series that makes up the book Equivalences, the Swiss photographer was inspired by early 20ᵉ century Middle Eastern postcards, and colored large format black and white prints of landscapes in Cappadocia, Turkey, using acrylic and airbrush. These compositions then being rephotographed.

Rather than reproducing these images, the book is a pretext for another interpretation. By playing with the layers of color in the print, the artist creates a new machine-generated representation, a mechanical intervention this time. The original images merge with those transformed and sketch a sequence claiming non-narration. Its title pays homage to Stieglitz’s famous “Equivalents” series of vertically shot images of pieces of sky and clouds, known as the first series of abstract photographs.

Douglas Mandry is a young Swiss photographer. A 2013 graduate of Ecal, he combines his photography practice with plastic reflection. By mixing visual elements and color, Douglas creates images that lie between art, sculpture and still life.