Abstract of the accomplished photographic work
In Echoes, Stephen Dock raises the issue of the representation of war. Drawing on his own photographic work, created between 2011 and 2018, during the Syrian war, and then along the migrant exodus route (in Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Lesbos, and Macedonia), he engages in a process of reinterpretation and reappropriation of his images.
More than a decade after this conflict, which gave rise to a new era in the production, treatment, and distribution of images, Stephen Dock attempts to deconstruct a photographic register. Contrary to documentary principles, he imposes and maintains a temporal, factual, and physical distance in revisiting this original corpus of several thousand images.
Through decontextualization and the creation of new forms, he challenges the system and the principles of the image as reported, drawing from his own experience as a young self-taught photographer, aged 22 at the time.
Description of the project you intend to pursue through the Prize
In continuation of my work on conflict, La Cause addresses the persistent, visible and invisible aspects of the civil war in Northern Ireland, which is said to be over. Enriched with my initial research, this project aims to represent the conflict within its contemporary landscape through three elements related to its birth, permanence, and transmission: the border, memory, and culture.
I will photograph this border, which crystallizes the history of this territory, using a large-format camera and in color, following a defined protocol on both sides, in a mirrored manner.
Walls silently govern the physical and psychological spaces in our societies. Memory, a substantial ingredient of the conflict, will be embodied in a collection of fragments of architectural and urban structures.
Culture will be represented by one of the emblematic Northern Irish rituals: the Bonfires erected from generation to generation, which perpetuate the divisions.
A co-publication with Delpire is possible.