Auguste-Dormeuil
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil
Mud in your Eye, 2013
Edition of 5 ex
l'artiste & In Situ / fabienne leclerc, Paris
Mud in Your Eye is a series of photographs showing blow-ups of postcards of cemeteries. On the front, containing the image and part of the message, all the 'living elements' (vegetation, figures) have been covered over in Indian ink, leaving visible only the handwriting, the tombs and the architectural elements.
The postcards, dating from the early twentieth century, were used in correspondence. The intention behind sending a postcard with such a view remains disturbingly enigmatic, while the accompanying messages range ffrom awkwardness to deliberate cruelty : 'How is your mother?' asks one.
The postcard is a form that invokes memory, which is what a cemetery does. Both bespeak a presence within absence. They weave a connection in time and space, attempt to show what cannot be shown. Here, these places and objects of memory are in turn darkened by an invasive shadow, like Malaparte's 'black wind', which 'colours everything it touches black'.
