Description
The work Two Donkeys in a War Zone finds its source in a video of the U.S. Army available on Youtube. A drone follows an attack against an Isis camp. Between two explosions, the infrared camera briefly highlights two donkeys.
This intrusion of two animals unintentionally witnessing human violence had me look for drone strike videos produced by the U.S., Afghan or British army with moments or details that do not belong to the combat but are instead a part of ” normal life “, the off- camera’s of an asymmetrical war. These photographs of operative videos, supporting military propaganda, show the conflict through the drone’s eye. The operator is only looking for his target, but life carries on next to the explosion. These movements, instants of existence, signify humanity. Two donkeys in a war zone is a search, by cropping and subverting operative images, for traces of life inside pictures of death.
RVB BOOKS is an independent Parisian company that publishes books according to an original modus operandi, born thanks to the possibilities offered by Internet, and yet close to the Pre-Gutenbergian era of publishing. Matthieu and Rémi work on the assumption that each and every book, and in some cases, every model of every author should have its own form and format. Not a collection, but a living spirit which is not frozen into rigid forms.
Mathieu Charon and Rémi Faucheux both followed singular paths in the publishing industry before uniting their ideas and their know-how to create RVB BOOKS in 2011. Matthieu was at the origin of the collection Janvier Léo Scheer: monographs devoted to artistic photography, while Rémi directed the publishing project “Clinic” with Useful Photography.
