Thierry Cohen

Darkened Cities

Imaginary travels, from ‘Binary Kids’ to ‘Darkened Cities’

The technological revolution has changed the way society functions from its chief systems to individual behaviour.

Thierry Cohen was one of the first French photographers to work with new technologies back in the late 1980s, quickly adopting digital techniques and exploring their potential. But above all, he questioned the impact of new technologies on society, from the private sphere to the public one.

His first work in this direction, ‘Binary kids’, visibly translates the eruption of new systems of thought and communication in our mental structure. A series of portraits of children and adolescents, emblematically represented by the «internet generation», becomes the screen format of information technology circuits and electronic components.

The plasticity of the portraits, an allusion to classic painting, contrasted with the detachment of the superimposed watermark images, like mysterious tattoos or esoteric lacework. A way of representing the possession of brain activity, expressing a series of concerns and questions regarding the power of artificial intelligence.

Through the series ‘Darkened Cities’, begun in 2011, Cohen uses the same originality and recourse to new technologies to confront the issue of light pollution in cities and its influence on perception. Using a procedure once again involving the superimposition of two realities, Cohen depicts the starlit sky on top of the megalopolis, as it truly is, albeit invisible.

Using wide ranging panoramic views or dizzying close-ups in the heart of cities drowned in the dark, his images are powerfully beautiful and immensely magical. Through an extremely complex procedure, after having turned out every artificial light and transposing images of the skies above New York, Rio, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Paris, photographed at the same latitude but in open and desert spaces, Cohen creates a blackout and an effect of absolute disorientation. Anachronistic visions that recall the ancient relationship with the sky, now lost and impossible in cities that are illuminated throughout the day and night. Visions where from the dark, under star scattered skies, profiles of cities slowly emerge, recognisable thanks to emblematic places or buildings.

Laura Serani