DOUGLAS MANDRY
You can find the shortfilm about the series "MONUMENTS" here
We are pleased to announce that Douglas Mandry is winner of the “Foam Talent Award 2020”. This distinction is awarded annually to 20 talents by the Foam Museum of Photography in Amsterdam and ist one of the most prestigious awards for young photography artists; Douglas won it for his series “Monuments”.
The series “Monuments” reflects a relationship between technological evolution and climate change. Collecting images of glaciers taken in the early 20th century, Douglas Mandry transferred them onto actual pieces of geotextile, which have themselves been brought down from the Alps after a season on the ice. Through the antique process of lithography, a double-exposure phenomenon occurs: the images, fading memories of golden age in Switzerland‘s tourism, become a part of the today’s technological attempts to preserve the past which no longer exists.
Meanwhile, Douglas Mandry travelled deep into the Swiss Alps, collecting pieces of ice protected by man-made geotextile fabrics. The blocks of ice are inserted in a self made large format camera containing photo sensitive color paper. Using specific aperture shutters pierced in the wooden camera, the light is conducted through the ice directly onto the paper. As an outcome, a trace of the melting ice left on the paper is developed in a dark room sometimes several days later. Thereby the process of disappearance is recorded photographically.
Douglas Mandry (*1989, CH) is an artist who lives and works in Zurich. He gained a Bachelors in both Visual Communication and Photography from the University of Art and Design ECAL in Lausanne. Since graduating Mandry has been nominated for numerous awards including the Paul Huf Award, Swiss Federal Design Award and shortlisted for Prix Voies-Off. His work has been shown in international venues including Photo London and Unseen (solo exhibition in 2017). Bildhalle gave him a solo show in 2016 and 2018, a next solo show is planned in September 2021.
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Mandry’s practice is a direct response to the digitalization of photography and the technological accelerations that came along with it. Always shooting his initial images in analogue, all of Mandry’s interventions in the image are done by hand, through the application of different historic photographic processes or by physically cutting and pasting.
«Seductively beautiful in the use of color, the diversity of form and the choice of materials while, simultaneously, being conceptually sophisticated in terms of subject-matters and photographic processes: the starting points for the artist Douglas Mandry (b. 1989 in Geneva), who has moved to Zurich in 2013, are real world phenomena and experimenting with various photographic techniques. Oscillating between historical analogue and contemporary digital imaging methods, the artist creates his very own pictorial worlds. Observations in nature and the examination of current issues merge in his work with his reflections regarding his chosen medium photography - documentation with abstraction, reasoning with sensuality. Conceptual rigor and experimental liberties are well balanced in Douglas Mandry’s work, and the autonomous nature of photographic processes bears serendipitous results: the unforeseen meets intention and idea. This way, complex issues receive poetic allure. Each work retains a productive riddle that encourages us to question our perception of the reality of the world and the reality of images.»
Nadine Olonetzky
COLLECTIONS
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Art collection, ABN AMRO Bank, The Netherlands
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Art collection, De Nederlandsche Bank, The Netherlands
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Art collection Kanton Zürich
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Art collection Stadt Winterthur
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Art collection Swiss Re
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Art collection Zürcher Kantonalbank
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Art collection Credit Suisse
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Various private collections
