Variations on Contemporary Carnages

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

At the dawn of our new century, the creative act is often political. Rashid Rana is the author of a surprising photomontage, certainly composed by computer (although the catalog of Christie's is not that clear).

The artist provided the details of that tragic day that guided his inspiration. Let us remind this sequence before describing the result.

2007 is a terrible year in Pakistan. Preparations for the elections, a source of hope, is alternating with attacks. On October 18, Benazir Bhutto returned to Karachi after eight years in exile. She is greeted by a jubilant crowd. Rana goes to his work, particularly full of emotion that day: a photographic report in a slaughterhouse for goats. He observes the progress of his own sensitivity to the accumulation of corpses. Back home, he learned that an attack against Bhutto left 140 dead.

His diptych titled Red Carpet - 4, measuring 2.05 x 3.04 m, edited in five copies in 2008, shows a classic Oriental rug in actual size. Approaching closely, we see that the image is actually composed of a repetition of hundreds of pictures of goats.

We can discuss long-standing interpretations of this striking contrast of subjects: the crowd, the banality of death, beauty. Let us come back instead to the auction news: Christie's will sell this photograph, estimated £ 135 K, in London on June 10.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

Excellent result for this especially contemporary artwork : K £ 175 including premium. It will be interesting to follow this young artist (born in 1968), and not only in the field of photography.