Robert Hyde and Lo Kee both track atmospheres which call out to them. Two projects inspired by loneliness and poetry. Here are our readers picks #250.
Robert Hyde
Robert Hyde is an American photographer who moved to Paris in 2017. He fell in love with the media as he travelled to the French capital in 2001. “I saw the Nan Goldin show at the Pompidou and the Wolfgang Tilmans at Palais de Tokyo. I learned to develop film and make black-and-white prints in a little studio near Bastille. I took a cinema class at Paris 8 and an art history class at the Sorbonne”, he remembers. 15 years later, Robert Hyde started focusing on creative documentary photography as he followed a program created by Spéos and Magnum. “It was the word “creative” that drew me to the program. Straight documentary doesn’t suit me, my work is bent, or maybe twisted”, he tells us. His series Cruising, a dark and mysterious tale, captures a universe often dissimulated. “The term defines the search for anonymous sexual encounters between men in public spaces, the photographer explains. A layered subject, dealing with repression, sexuality, shame, loneliness and escape. I am fascinated by the codes of cruising, its rituals and objectives, its gratifications and, perhaps most of all, its frustrations.” In a world where nature seems to have taken back its rights – the forest of the Bois de Vincennes – Robert Hyde’s images tenderly illustrates the traces of men, of ephemeral encounters occurring behind the shadows of trees.
© Robert Hyde
Lo Kee
Lo Kee, born in France in 1989, is a geography. Since 2015, the artist has dedicated his life to the practice of photography. “As a self-taught artist, I’ve trained in the streets of my city, to perfect my approach”, he tells us. Influenced by the paintings of Rubens, Vermeer or Caravaggio, Lo Kee enjoys theatrical black and whites and chiaroscuros. “They have fascinated me ever since my childhood, and they are now the tools I use to create poetic and graphic ambiance, he says. I always track atmospheres that call out to me. Urban or natural landscapes, still lifes and street photography intertwine to give birth to a monochrome universe evoking the notions of passing, absence and loneliness.” As he read the Dictionnaire de la ville et l’urbain (Dictionary of city and urban spaces, ed.) by Denise Pumain, Thierry Paquot and Richard Kleinschmager, Lo Kee discovered the notion of “urban fantasy”. “In a world where half of the population lives in cities, artistically exploring this superficial environment made by and for mankind seemed interesting”, the artist tells us. By playing with compositions, lights and urban geometry, the photographer reveals his own “dreamy vision or an urban world made of superpositions and cuttings.”
© Lo Kee
Image d’ouverture : © Robert Hyde
