Sami Benhadj, Tarik Hayward

Awarded

Körner Union: Sami Benhadj / Tarik Hayward

Photography

Photography

Jury report

Natural-artificial worlds
How can one work for the most dif­fer­ent clients and still de­velop a dis­tinc­tive sig­na­ture? The two vi­sual de­sign­ers Sami Ben­hadj and Tarik Hay­ward and their label 'Körner Union' are a case in point. They wrest an un­usual as­pect from each as­sign­ment: for the pub­li­ca­tion 'Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Grants 2005', pub­lished by the Swiss Fed­eral Of­fice of Cul­ture, they were asked to por­tray the win­ners in their stu­dios. This brief could eas­ily have led to con­ven­tional por­traits. As was to be ex­pected the de­sign­ers are por­trayed within their stu­dio sur­round­ings, for ex­am­ple in front of a com­puter. The com­puter how­ever is in­volved in such a dense tan­gle of wires that one is taken aback. Has some­one ma­nip­u­lated some­thing, has some­one ex­ag­ger­ated the chaos of wires? For an­other as­sign­ment they pushed the alien­ation ef­fect even fur­ther: for an art cen­tre near Paris – on Cha­touis­land, which was vis­ited more than hun­dred years ago by Im­pres­sion­ist painters with their easels – 'Körner Union' took six pic­tures of the gar­den area, know­ing that it had been fully re­con­structed a few years ago. What could have re­sulted in con­ven­tional, 'beau­ti­ful' pic­tures turned out as some­thing very anti-idyl­lic. For what one would ex­pect as a manda­tory com­po­nent of a gar­den pho­tog­ra­phy is art­fully ex­cluded: the blue sky. Where one would gaze in the dis­tance, there are light blue stu­dio back­grounds in­stalled on stands. This dras­tic ac­tion causes a claus­tro­pho­bic ef­fect: the ac­tual day­light is sub­dued; whereas the light blue of the ar­ti­fi­cial sky ra­di­ates an in­tru­sive colour­ful­ness. This does not fit very well to­gether and refers iron­i­cally to the ar­ti­fi­cial­ity of the lo­ca­tion. The doc­u­men­ta­tion is de­vel­oped in a wil­ful man­ner, so to say in a friendly in­fil­tra­tion of the as­sign­ment. 'Körner Union' con­vinces with works that fol­low a strong con­cept and in a sen­sual and play­ful way chal­lenge the be­holder's habits of see­ing. Pic­ture se­ries evolve from un­spec­tac­u­lar briefs which man­age to cap­ti­vate the be­holder's at­ten­tion for longer than com­mon pic­tures.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Sami Benhadj
Born in
1977
Education
designer HES en communication visuelle
Group name
Körner Union

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Tarik Hayward
Born in
1979
Education
designer HES, communication visuelle, spécialisation photographie
Group name
Körner Union

also in