How was your dream?
Thaddé Comar
« How was your dream ? » is a photographic project realized during the Hong Kong protests between June and October 2019. This work deals with new forms of demonstration and insurrection in our post-contemporary era dominated by seamless control societies. Five years before, in Hong Kong, the « Umbrella Movement » was quickly repressed by state and police violence. In 2019 the democratic uprising that began in May, gave itself the means to continue. Faced with a sophisticated arsenal of control (facial recognition, geolocation, carding, eavesdropping, infiltration, water cannons, tear gas, helicopter, sonic weapons, non-lethal rifles), the Hong Kong demonstrators have developed a repertoire of techniques based on principles of invisibility and intraceability (anonymity, lasers of blindness, pocket of faraday, vision by drones, masks of all kinds, encrypted communication etc…), allowing them to mitigate the effects of the repression. These new devices, which contribute to the transformation of the forms of struggle and resistance, however, push for the gradual erasure of individual singularities. In the future, will societies and sophisticated systems of control, force us to make our human singularities disappear? Will this be done in favor of a new common identity ?
In a period of our history where information and «truth» are concepts regularly questioned and widely debated by a certain number of political, economic and social actors. So much, that a large part of our population no longer knows which saint to follow. Who and what to believe. Information and its different stagings are a contemporary problem that I wish to question through this projects. If the informative image is often the result of a classic photo-journalistic practice which must answer criteria of ethics, objectivity and narration, the media that present these images are free to accompany the content with a number of textual and aesthetic elements. The link between the raw information and the environment can create an ambiguous content whose informative value can appear «corrupted». In response to these concerns, this project is part of a strong desire to provide a strictly visual testimony, in an artistic approach, including hangings and edition. I try to stand out from the classic representation of these events, and bring a new perspective to the viewer.
Thaddé Comar, a Franco-Swiss photographer born in 1993, graduated with distinction from ECAL in Lausanne in 2018. His work is deeply intertwined with current events and social movements, reflecting a profound commitment to contemporary issues. Today, his portfolio spans from editorial to commissioned work, as well as personal projects where he delves into the nuances and facets of our ever-evolving society.