Contemporary artists\u2019 keen interest for collecting and collating images has recently given rise to a number of exhibitions and events,^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - In particular, Collecter\/Recycler. Usages de l\u2019archive photographique dans la \u00adcr\u00e9ation contemporain<\/em>, March 20 to May 9, 2010, Centre photographique d\u2019Ile-de-France, Pontault-Combault; La Revanche de l\u2019archive photographique<\/em>, June 4 to July 31, Centre de la photographie, Geneva; and L\u2019Image \u00e0 la puissance image<\/em>, a one-day conference organized on January 21 at University of Rennes 2 by the magazine 2.0.1.<\/span> reflecting as it does the widely received idea that we live in a world of images. Today, the shortest road to the heart of the world is through its representations.^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - The idea was already Schopenhauer\u2019s in The World as Will and Representation<\/em> (1818) (see Gallimard: Folio, 2009, for a new French translation in four volumes). For the \u00adsignificance of the work, see below.<\/span> It would be an injustice to the artists\u2019 work, however, to dwell on this generality without examining the specific leanings it encompasses. For while current \u201ciconographic artists\u201d^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Garance Chabert and Adrien M\u00f4le, \u201cArtistes iconographes,\u201d Art 21<\/em>, No. 25 (Winter 2009-10).<\/span> likely all share the same observation, their goals diverge nonetheless and follow two different orientations. Some attempt to document the world, making transitive use of images that represent samples of existence that help better understand its doings and events; this current follows the great artistic tradition of enquiring into the real. Others simply compile their inventory of snapshots, implicitly positing that that is all there is. They accumulate a great variety of images, amateur photos, postcards and posters, magazines and ads, for, in the footsteps of such artists as Warhol, who lauded the surface, they are interested in representations as such.^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - Also see Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens<\/em> (1969), and its leitmotif inspired by Paul  Val\u00e9ry: \u201cle plus profond, c\u2019est la peau\u201d\u2009\u2014\u2009or skin is as deep as it gets.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the artists who accumulate images, some are akin to the photographer in Antonioni\u2019s Blow Up<\/em>, who multiplied the prints and enlargements of his snapshots to get a better view of reality. Through the images, he seeks an ultimate truth. For him, they are all evidence, gathered to shore up the interpretation of an event. Such is the case with a piece by the artist of Lebanese descent, Walid Raad, whose Untitled<\/em> (1982-2007) presents a series of photos he took as a teenager after an Israeli raid of Beirut. Found in his personal archives in 2007, they were selected, assembled in pairs, then endowed with captions and a text explaining their origin. \u201cI was 15 in 1982, and wanted to be as close as possible to the events,\u201d he says, explaining his motivation for using the images today. The result is a moving collection, bearing direct witness to real drama, yet distinguishing itself from journalistic work by the spontaneity of the artist\u2019s youthful gaze. Indeed, the memories of an adolescence marked by war lend the piece a measure of sadness, emphasized by some spots or scratches due to the slightly damaged negatives. Far from weakening the image content, these formal stigmata accompany the traces of Lebanese history in sustaining an inspired meditation. Rather than a chasm between 1982 and the present, time gone by brings us closer to the past. This piece follows on Raad\u2019s previous work with collections and archives. First a solo project, begun in 1990, and then a collective effort, The Atlas Group assembles documents, photos, films, and texts on the contemporary history of Lebanon to create an archive exhibited via installations and performances. With Raad, the assembled documents are always a key to understanding a complex, misunderstood reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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