A World Forgotten, Reborn
Claude Dityvon
Photography’s Enfant Terrible
This selection can only show a tiny fraction of the photographic career of Dityvon, a brief adventure in the mid-1970s, presenting a responsible view of reality. His photography has never targeted scoops; it has explored everyday life in depth, to reveal the wonderment in ordinary events.
The concerns of a man in constant pursuit of the meaning of life are already apparent. His existentialist quest, built on doubt and uncertainty, and his determination as an artist, led him to elusive, indefinable elements. Dityvon’s photography, like poetry, is a parallel language, a means of expression with its own grammar and syntax that he uses for the purpose of introspection, maintaining a distance from the subject of the photo which then becomes a pretext.
Preview
Dityvon has his aesthetic, historic, musical and literary references, and indulges in flexible, albeit measured, improvisation, in the tradition of jazz musicians. Improvising on the unexpected means having an open, free mind and an extraordinarily fertile imagination. In fact the subject is of little importance. The dramatic composition, the contrast of light and shade, the choice of angles and the time chosen all combine to form a picture where movements, expressions and attitudes, lines and shapes interact. Dityvon’s aestheticism is determined by the strength of his compositions, the careful use of space, the harmony between elements, producing an organized choreography that is both the primordial source and essence of his shots. In the Pyrenees, he captured the prancing and dancing of young children. Aboard a trawler he caught a body in a state of levitation. He orchestrated a sweeping ballet beneath a leaden sky. Nothing could stop him. “The body has an entire language to express the meaning of what a human being is – ungainliness, nimbleness, clumsiness and determination. We can learn a great deal about human beings when we know how to look at the human body.” Dityvon did not settle for simply shooting what he saw; he added his inspiration, moods, anger and passion. Dityvon never stopped searching, meditating, moving ahead. He reached a level of maturity, unbeaten and unbeatable, together with childlike insolence. Every single one of his pictures stands as a challenge to “conceptual” photography. He can be seen enjoying himself, suffering, questioning, being despondent, then rising to attack again, with ever greater inspiration.
Vanessa Ortola, from her thesis, Dityvon, Photographe de l’ombre (Paris, 2000).
