For Alex Majoli, Photojournalism and Performance are Inseparable

From the Aperture article by David Campany - 

 

Europe, Asia, Brazil, Congo. For eight years, across continents and countries, Alex Majoli has photographed events and nonevents. Political demonstrations, humanitarian emergencies, and quiet moments of daily life. What holds these disparate images together, at first glance at least, is the quality of light and the sense of human theater. A sense that we are all actors attempting, failing, and resisting the playing of parts that history and circumstance demand; and a sense that we are all interconnected. Somehow.

Majoli’s photographs result from his own performance. Entering a situation, he and his assistants slowly go about setting up a camera and flash lights. This activity is a kind of spectacle in itself, observed by those who may eventually be photographed. Majoli begins to shoot, offering no direction to people who happen to be before his camera. This might last twenty minutes, or even an hour. Sometimes the people adjust their actions in anticipation of an image to come. Sometimes they are too preoccupied with the intensity of their own lives to even notice.