Jürgen Nefzger

Jürgen Nefzger - At the gates of the kingdom

"From 1997 to 2000, Jürgen Nefzger photographed the housing being built around the Eurodisney theme park, producing a documentary record of the division of a territory and the emergence of a modelled form of architecture. But the precision of the photos, taken with a 8x10 camera, and the absence of any trace of activity, except a kind of traversal of the landscape, create an effect of dispossession: we cannot find our space any more; we are as if projected into a disconnected delocalisation. He thus constructs a visual oxymoron in which the desire for an individualisation of the family space paradoxically pressures towards likeness. In Aux Portes du Royaume we enter a world where the other is first of all the fellow being that the facades of the houses repeat ad infinitum, before the actions of everyday life can create the paths and networks that will make individuals visible."

Antoine Perrot, Vacarmes # 42, winter 2008