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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

also in

2009

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

also in

2004

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