Olivier
Mirguet
North Korea – A Different Journey
Olivier Mirguet was awarded
the World Press Photo prize in 2003 for his work on North Korea. This
was the first of his photo series on places that represent power,
a project elaborating on the idea of imprisonment, surveillance, visible
and hidden power.
He says: “North Korea doesn't appreciate photographers. However,
the strictest regime in the world likes photographs. They are the
basis for propaganda. What can be seen in this « socialist paradise”
? Nothing that a journalist looks for: starving people, political
prisons and nuclear plants. These pictures do not exist; not yet.
A tourist in North Korea cannot escape surveillance. He is advised
to photograph everything that glorifies the regime. By going there,
I accepted being a propaganda journalist. I systematically looked
for the traces of power, beyond the obviousness of the revolutionary
slogans and of the omnipresent portraits of Kim il Sung, constantly
asking myself: How do individuals find their place in this collectivised
and oppressed space? This way, I rebuilt a reality that revealed itself
to me. It is no less terrible. "
Olivier Mirguet is 34 years old. He is a photographer and journalist
at Radio France. Apart from the series on North Korea he has also
worked in Morocco where former opponents of Hassan II’s regime
showed him the disturbing, scary interiors of this country’s
secret prisons.
Another projects is a series of photos from Maison Radio France in
Paris. The artist spent two years taking pictures in its corridors.
Built in 1964, this round, 10-storey high building with a central
tower represents a place where information, and thus power, is conceived.
Empty corridors haunted him with riddles and a reverberating echo
of the paradox a radio show host faces in his search for relevant
news.
Olivier Mirguet has been represented by Agence Vu since 2003. He has
also worked as a journalist for Radio France since 1998 and a photo
reporter for France Info and France Inter. He graduated from the University
Centre for Journalism in Strasbourg.
Exhibition place :
CSW Laznia (ul. Jaskólcza 1, Gdansk)
August 18 – September 23 (Tue – Sun 12-6 pm)
opening: August 17 at 6 pm.
