by
Dr. Mohammed Sameer Abd Elsalam
In her experimental photographs, Carole Touati creates new semiotic relationship between the building as a human phenomenon and the rich, fantastic emptiness. Each object and empty area, according to Carol, has a metaphoric life, due to the creative point of the poetic perspective. So, Carol supports the aesthetic impact of modernity with celebrating a new silent sympathy behind the signs of her snapshots, that we can see the transcend of the buildings in a poetic, calm atmosphere.
Moreover, Carole went beyond the presence of architecture, and she remind me of Jean Baudrillard's discourse about the self exhausting of the transcended structure of modern buildings(1). So, Carole discovered the playful shapes and signs in the empty area beyond the modern architecture.
Most of Carole's photographs were taken from low or very low perspective, that this type of view reveals the individual spirit of modern rhythm, and it also goes beyond the real borders of architecture towards an imaginary space or an interior, dynamic dance.
Sometimes, Carole prefer to take an abstract, close up snapshots, and she revealed the dynamic, geometric shapes in the chosen part of building. Therefore, she created a new abstract imagined work in the metaphoric space of the real object, so the signs of Carole's abstract photographs imply to a deep semiotic transference inside the open space and its fantastic frame.
Consequently, I think that Carole's photographs have a hidden narrative movement behind the signs of geometric shapes or the signs of buildings; this movement is also circulatory and infinite. So, it reminds us of the intellectual relation between the concept of relative existence and archetype of eternal life.
While I was watching Carole's photographs, I remembered Wassily Kandinsky's perception about the significations of triangle; that he implied to its similarity to a singular, isolated man, and his feelings are paradoxical, that he is sad, joyful and unable to connect with other people well, like Beethoven.(2). Therefore, we can see the figurative, human sounds behind newborn triangles in the sky and the empty areas in Carole's photographs, and we also can see the rise of modernity impact behind the white triangle of the Louvre which seems to be in a dreamy space.
Additionally, we can interpret Carole's snapshots by the semiotic square of Algirdas Greimas and Jacques Fontanille to reveal the relations between structures of signs and their various significations, for example, Carole made a structural discordance between the superfluity of signs and the limited object in her snapshot "Endless Scales" that the geometric shapes referred to a fantastic, infinite triangle, and it implied to the absent borders of the buildings in the same time. On the other hand, we can assume two other hypotheses in the bottom of the semiotic, semantic square; the first is the realistic appearance of the building in the cognitive world of the viewer, and the second is the infinite, imagined dance of the shapes behind the visible part of Carole's snapshot (see the semiotic squire in under the article).
Finally, I believe that the French photographer Carole Touati(3) returned to the aesthetic, modern impact to create new, poetic spaces and dreamy signs. She also went beyond borders towards some postmodern elements, such as becoming and the rhetoric of emptiness.
*References:
(1) Read, Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel, The Singular Objects of Architecture, Translated by Robert Bononno, University of Minnesota Press, 2005, P.4.
(2) Read, Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning The Spiritual in Art, Translated by M. T. H. Sadler, Dover Pablications, New York, 1997, p. 6.
(3) See Carol's photographs at:
Dr. Mohammed Sameer Abd Elsalam
Art Critic
Literary Critic
Graphic Designer
msameerster@gmail.com
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