Guest Contribution by Doya Karolini

Last spring, French photographer Frédéric Lebain paid Big Apple a double visit.  And when he returned to Asnieres//FR, he had quite a few weird and playful shots in his zip that captured the city, while giving the leading role to details, you can hardly notice.  These, he uses to confuse and entertain our optic nerves.  His photographs remind us of something we used to play and spend time on as kids, the quite entertaining “what is wrong with this picture” – game.  Where usually, the winner would then have to notice that one minor detail, an ordinary vase on the table (for instance) is placed up side down.

Frédéric Lebain is a 34year old photographer from France who lives and works in Asnieres, but doesn’t really need any special introduction at all -not after a dozen exhibitions in Paris, Tokyo, Taipei and Hong Kong.  Yet this time, the Frenchman decided not to produce any large-scale postcard images, but to introduce us to his newest work that seems –although very similar to the logic of a postcard- to play that specific game with our optic nerves.

The canvas is the city of cities, New York, but the details, the little things that catch our attention and make the difference, are the actual protagonists winking surrealistically and pretty much matrix-like.  Giving each shot a closer look; one can notice a pair of shoes, or two hands holding one large poster that can hardly differ from its background, indicating the melting of two different shots in one.

True, monsieur Lebain paid Big Apple a visit with his digital camera  and photographed different locations.  Then he printed out some large details from the spots, returned to those spots and made new photos of the prints aligned to the locations.  If there ever was time and space combined in art, then definitely here and now.  // New York, New York, 1-2.