In the new issue of Source I review Raphal Dallaporta’s recent exhibition at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin.
‘The View from Outside’, Source, 79 (Summer 2014). 58-59
Extract
Raphaël Dallaporta’s photography pivots on ideas, on some phenomenon that the camera can interrogate and find a mode to understand. Dallaporta’s desire to critique and enfold into his photographic modes the act of envisioning means that his projects tend to one of two poles. His camera either hovers above or outside the thing it seeks, consciously unable to see what it pursues. Or it tunnels inside and underneath the surface and photographs the internality that would never otherwise be seen. In both cases Dallaporto toys with an aestheticisation of his subject matter that deliberately brings the politics of his project close to a clash with his photographs’ imagery. It’s this fine, almost excruciating and embarrassing balance, which gives his work its power.
Colin Graham 