Philippe Durand — Portfolio — Slash Paris

Philippe Durand’s photographs try resolutely to get away from any form of cliché. This ambition is admittedly extremely difficult to fulfil. Today, more than at any other time, we live in a society where cliché is omnipresent and that is overloaded with images: images which have become discursive in nature, that are used to tell a story, those used to demonstrate something, images which come together as the bible of the illiterate and more than any other, images used in advertising. We live in a society, where entertainment rules, the screen is everything, a world of organised passivity, where everything is staged, where even the slightest activity is carried out under watchful eyes. We live a reality that is prepared in advance, a reality that we can recognise before we even see it, one that is foreseen long before it is seen. Our society is one of mindless thoughts, thoughts that have already been thought, confirmation of what has already been confirmed.

— François Coadou, Paris 2009