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Florian Joye

Awarded

Florian Joye

Photo research 'Desert Gate'

Photography

Jury report

Planned and built reality
What have we here? Mod­els, stage sets or built re­al­ity? These are im­ages that are hard to de­ci­pher, con­fus­ing and dis­turb­ing. Im­ages rem­i­nis­cent of Hol­ly­wood, Las Vegas or Dis­ney­land. But what we ac­tu­ally have be­fore us is ev­i­dence of the de­light the United Arab Emi­rates take in build­ing, above all in Dubai. Fu­ture and pre­sent, ideal and re­al­ity are skil­fully mixed in Flo­rian Joye's se­ries of pho­tographs 'Desert Gate', which os­cil­lates be­tween pro­mo­tional and doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy. Sheikh Rashid Al Mak­toum, a for­mer ruler of Dubai, said shortly be­fore he died to his son and suc­ces­sor: 'My son, there will be an Ara­bia after the petrodol­lar, and it is up to you to build it.' His fa­ther's chal­lenge has now led the son to wrest land from the sea and force the desert back in order to build at­trac­tions in the lit­tle Emi­rate that will ap­peal to peo­ple from all over the world and boost the econ­omy. This de­ci­sion has placed the whole coun­try on a very dif­fer­ent foot­ing: it is in a state of tran­si­tion from yes­ter­day to to­mor­row. This peaks in pic­tures of elab­o­rately con­structed stage sets, placed in the no man's land of the desert to show what will stand here one day. Ar­chi­tec­tural mod­els me­tres long show­ing all the up­heaval under great acrylic cov­ers make the plan­ning look like Sci­ence Fic­tion. Other pic­tures show high-rise hous­ing that has ac­tu­ally been built in the mid­dle of the desert; they seem so cut off from civ­i­liza­tion and water that it would seem im­pos­si­ble that the place could be brought to life. Pho­tog­ra­pher Flo­rian Joye's work shows us how close re­al­ity and fic­tion are to each other in these lat­i­tudes at the mo­ment, and how the build­ing pro­jects pre­sented are for some a source of pride and con­fi­dence and for oth­ers of doubts and fear about these ex­cep­tional cir­cum­stances. The pho­tog­ra­pher has recorded dream and night­mare soberly and cap­tured them on paper.
Ar­i­ana Pradal

Biography

Florian Joye
Born in
1979
Education
Photographer
Group name
Novembre Magazine

Web

www.novembremagazine.com

also in

2012

2013

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