Three Photographic Approaches to Space: Cuisset, Pétremant, Dejente

The article examines three French photographers—Thibaut Cuisset, Philippe Pétremant, and Laurent Dejente—whose works, shown in 2005, reconfigure spatial perception through distinct strategies. Cuisset's exhibition "Le Dehors absolu" at Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire (4 Nov–3 Dec 2005) presents ascetic landscapes of the Namib Desert and Iceland, devoid of anecdote, while his concurrent series "Rue de Paris" (8–22 Dec 2005 and 3–21 Jan 2006) documents his familiar Montreuil street, capturing micro-events with a handheld camera. Pétremant's "Vacuité(s)" (2001–2004), at Galerie Le Réverbère in Lyon (14 Sep–26 Nov 2005), focuses on banal, kitsch objects in tight close-ups, evoking vanitas and emptiness. Dejente's "Stations" (2005), also at Le Réverbère, inserts costumed figures into artificially reconfigured landscapes, creating perceptual vertigo by rotating space 90 degrees, as seen in images like "Lille le 20/03/2005" and "Dakar le 04/04/2005." The article argues that Dejente's work, while critiquing the artificiality of nature and loss of subjectivity, ultimately transforms photography into myth, referencing the biblical parting of the Red Sea.