Olivier Culmann

France (1970)
Biennale Images Vevey
2014
Diversions

While in residence in New Delhi, Olivier Culmann took an interest in utilitarian photography in the Indian capital’s plethora of digital retouching studios specialized in advertising. For his Diversions series, he decided to give those studios the images he shot in the streets of Delhi and Goa. A few days later, he received bare, postcard-like images back: Any undesirable element had been heavily Photoshopped or even erased from the pictures. The diptychs displayed outdoors confronted viewers with two treatments of one same reality and revealed a nation that has an aseptic, fantasized image of itself, as a reflection of the economic miracle of the “Shining India”.

Biennale Images Vevey
2014
The Others

Olivier Culmann used his own image to wittily explore current societal codes and modes of self-representation in India. Presented for the first time in full at Festival Images, The Others questions the construction of social status through image and the diversity of popular Indian iconography. These multiple portraits of the artist-chameleon, photographed in a local studio, Photoshopped, recomposed, or painted, were presented in a bespoke installation in one of Vevey’s former hairdressing salons.