Bruno Serralongue
Mr Joe Shrigley Jr, président de la nation Navajo
The half-length portrait of Joe Shirley presents a man with a great presence, wearing several items that point to ancestral Native American culture. In this photograph, which is relatively poor in information, the projection screen in the background acts as a clue about the event: Bruno Serralongue went to the second phase of the ‘Sommet Mondial sur la Société de l’Information’ (or SMSI, World Summit on Information Society, in Tunis in November 2005). This portrait echoes another picture in the same series (Native Peoples Claim Their Right to Participate in the Information Society) in which Joe Shirley is just a silhouette amongst the speakers, whereas here he occupies the entire frame. The strange impression that the model is posing for press photographers – and not for an artist making a portrait – reveals the staging of the event along the lines of the ‘discourse of order’ (Michel Foucault). In addition, the painting format introduces a different reading to that of a press photo. The artist questions the point of view and the space: “What distance should be adopted to face an event ? […] In my view, when using a different tool like a photographic chamber, there is necessarily a greater distance. […] In documentary photography, there is this idea of adjusting the distance, so that one cannot see too much or too little. One needs to find a distance within which the photographed person or event can ‘speak’”.