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Boris Eldagsen

Boris Eldagsen was born in Pirmasens in 1970. He studied photography and art in Mainz, Prague and Hyderabad in India as well as philosophy in Mainz and Cologne. Since attending a master class with Roger Ballen, both artists have been in a lively exchange with each other. Working in multimedia, he deals intensively with the subconscious, which inspires him again and again to create new worlds of images.

Boris Eldagsen is a solitary artist in the German photo scene who cannot be categorised as belonging to any school. His photographic and video works have been shown in galleries and institutions worldwide. Important stations were: Fridericianum Kassel, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, MAK Vienna, Edinburgh Art Festival, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Australian Centre of Photography Sydney, Encontros da Imagem Braga, Biennale Le Havre and Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth.

In 2013 he won the Prix Voies Off of the festival of the same name in Arles.

He has taught creativity, idea teaching and photographic art at the Fotoforum Frankfurt Summer Academy, Akademie für Bildende Kunst Mainz, Furtwangen University, Victorian College of the Arts & Music Melbourne, Photography Studies College Melbourne and PhotoWerkBerlin since 2004.

Boris Eldagsen

Boris Eldagsen was born in Pirmasens in 1970. He studied photography and art in Mainz, Prague and Hyderabad in India as well as philosophy in Mainz and Cologne. Since attending a master class with Roger Ballen, both artists have been in a lively exchange with each other. Working in multimedia, he deals intensively with the subconscious, which inspires him again and again to create new worlds of images.

Boris Eldagsen is a solitary artist in the German photo scene who cannot be categorised as belonging to any school. His photographic and video works have been shown in galleries and institutions worldwide. Important stations were: Fridericianum Kassel, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, MAK Vienna, Edinburgh Art Festival, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Australian Centre of Photography Sydney, Encontros da Imagem Braga, Biennale Le Havre and Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth.

In 2013 he won the Prix Voies Off of the festival of the same name in Arles.

He has taught creativity, idea teaching and photographic art at the Fotoforum Frankfurt Summer Academy, Akademie für Bildende Kunst Mainz, Furtwangen University, Victorian College of the Arts & Music Melbourne, Photography Studies College Melbourne and PhotoWerkBerlin since 2004.

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Boris Eldagsen challenged the idea of a unique reality through his images. He investigates the multiverse of the human mind in order to examine the unconscious, communicating on a dreamlike level through the images he creates. By studying and exploring the unconscious dimension of life in a very methodical way, Eldagsen transforms the subjects of his photographs in psychological archetypes, able to open doors, trigger emotions and unlock memories on a subjective as much as on a collective way. Despite over 200 years of psychology, the unconscious remains as vague and powerful as the gods it emancipated itself from. As a reservoir of our past experiences, it stores urges and feelings that we rationally have no access to. And this fascinates completely this German artist. Eldagsen only works at night, with minimal equipment, an in-camera approach without digital manipulation. Like a moth, he roams the streets searching for light, practising what he has termed “Inverted Street Photography”: instead of exploring stories, a place or a person, he hijacks and transforms what he sees in front of his camera into a symbol for the timeless workings of the mind. Some other time he also stages images with models to create portraits of the Collective Unconscious. To develop ideas and impulses for the shoot, he maps the overlapping areas of his unconscious and the models; he is then guided by the dynamics of the shoot to move deeper down the rabbit hole. His visual poetry transports the viewer between the sublime and the uncanny – where the attributes of photography, painting, theatre and art unite.

 

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