The fall, 2006
In 2006, Denis Darzacq asked dancers and athletes to perform jumps against background that he had found and prepared. Wearing ordinary clothes chosen in agreement with the photographer, the performers executed their leaps in these precisely defined settings.
Everything had been prepared in advance. Everything was ready. The models launched themselves into space. There is nothing false in these scenes . These moments really occurred. There is no fiction, no retouching or special effects. Photographed in the courtyards of buildings or in streets in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, in Nanterre and in Biarritz, these young people were just being themselves, simply performing jumps in a modern urban setting.
And the photographer shot the images, intervening only to give a few guidelines as to their movement. However, at the moment of the leap, chance and gravity also intervened.
And so the story could begin. With remote echoes of Icarus, impelled to take wing by his father in a glorious attempt to defy the laws of the universe and of gravity before he fell to earth, defeated by more powerful force. The persistence of dream – in spite of reason, in spite of Newton and Galileo. The thrill of altitude, the happiness of the passionate, the wild and the sporting.
Text by Virginie Chardin
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