A. Tamás Dezsö

For Tamás Dezsö, photography is built like a reflection around the memory of form and the fragility of the world. The Hungarian photographer was born in 1978 and has developed a body of work that interrogates the traces that remain, are erased and return, not only in the post-Soviet space with which he has long been associated, but also in our relationships with nature.

After being trained in photojournalism at the dawn of the new millennium, he moved towards arthouse documentary photography, slower and more meditative. But over time, the artist has shifted his gaze. It is not only human history that interests him, but the way in which the living world, in its humblest diversity, resists being forgotten. For several years, he has turned his attention to plants. The Garden series is a meditation without any commentary on the forms of organisation that plants develop without us seeing. Rather than fixing a garden in an overall composition, Tamás Dezsö frames it as close as possible. He scrutinises the direction of stems, the distribution of leaves and the position of branches. The photographs do not obey any classic rules of perspective: everything is there, face on, mixed up, overlapping, as if the plant world had freed itself from our gaze to play its own score.

Dezsö does not reveal a hidden nature, but rather suspends our automatic reflexes of perception. His images call for an interpretation with no centre. Plants are never alone: they are in relation, part of a moving whole that photography does not fix in place, but rather distils.

The series Tout se met à flotter (Everything begins to float) pushes this shift in perception to a radical point. By adjusting the colours, Dezsö creates a disturbing optical effect that shakes up our points of reference. The forms remain, but no longer evoke a familiar reality. Free of its familiar shades, the plant world loses its codes. The eye no longer knows what to think. Tamás Dezsö’s photographs affirm the plant world as the subject of the image, as a serene presence.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES