Raphaël Dallaporta

For several years now, this artist - a documentary photographer in the strictest sense of the word (testing concepts, employing systematic protocols, aiming for aesthetic consistency and more) - has been developing his projects in relation to science, or – more precisely - with scientists. Whether borrowing their instruments or being guided by mathematical or physical principles originating from disciplines other than the visual, he combines precision with poetry, setting his sights on meticulously developing and producing refined pieces that combine different printing techniques with imagination and creativity.

The project

The invitation to plunge into a dizzying back-and-forth between a buried past and an emerging future is the keystone of the Existing installation designed by Raphaël Dallaporta, in the initial phase of La Samaritaine Carte Blanche.

The series was created by Dallaporta in close collaboration with a range of professionals covering a wide variety of human issues. He worked with soldiers (Antipersonnel, 2004), doctors (Fragile, 2009) and archaeologists (Ruins, 2011), endeavouring to highlight phenomena, objects and areas, previously hidden, taboo and inaccessible respectively.

After painstaking preparations and meticulous surveys, Dallaporta established shooting protocols in order to enhance his photographs from purely documentary images to become symbolic visions.

Inspired by the archaeological techniques employed during his previous project (Chauvet - Pont d'Arc, 2016), Raphaël Dallaporta created Existing for La Samaritaine - a unique look at this historic site, its structure and its footprint in the city.

For this work, he was able to count on the support of Séverine Chabaud, in charge of Communication, and Arnaud Nouailhas, heading up Environment & Sustainable Development on the site. Thanks to the latter’s invaluable expertise, the artist changed his initial intention in order to produce this image, based on data recorded by the automated measuring instruments that monitor the construction site in the heart of Paris.

"Existing" derives its name directly from one of the three plans in operation at the site:

- “Plan Gros Oeuvre” (Major Work Plan): the major structural work, from the upper floor
- “Plan Existant” (Existing Plan) : the building as it was at the start of the construction work, from the middle levels
- “Plan Archi” (Architectural Plan): the future building as planned by the architects, from the lower levels

The installation

Starting from these definitions, the work is composed of three parts :

- A first vertical view shows a grid being raised, shot from the terrace of the site. This reinforced concrete grid – ethereal, removed from any context of time or space - reflects the artist’s infatuation with scale, combined with his childish fascination for cranes, from his first visit to the Gros Oeuvre (Major Work) site.
- The center of the work is a panoramic projection of the entire main building,  calculated from the 3D model and thousands of laser measurement points. To expand on these calculations, Raphaël Dallaporta collaborated with C ++ programmer Roman Eremchenko to convert the survey to look as if the original building had been X-rayed. The image therefore starts at the middle, blending ceilings and floors with the structural details of all the floors, which are now transparent.
- Finally, a set of 12 photographs are direct images of the walls, initially shot for purely documentary purposes while visiting the underground foundations. A ring flash brings out the contrasting colours of the different pigments and aerosol markings used for construction symbol, which will disappear during the final stages of the building work.  Many of the 12 images depict measurement and calculation details, precise and aligned, in contrast with the other work.   
- At first glance, there is nothing to formally link these very different compositions together.  However when brought together and carefully displayed at the same height and side by side, plane, the connection uniting these images with another universal language is emphasised – that of numbers, translated here by the alignment and symbolic interpretation of the grid.

Each element makes us question our relationship to the image in a remarkable way – in this installation, Raphaël Dallaporta in turn gathers fleeting moments, reinterpreted plans and positive transformation, while simultaneously appealing to our understanding of spacetime and the future.