Antoine d’Agata, or the Exaltation of Being

Corpus is an installation of texts, images and some audiovisual materials created by Antoine d’Agata. It takes a closer look at the trajectory of a person writing incessantly the same scenario of a turbulent life, giving the audience a chance to follow that trajectory to the black of the rabbit hole. Sound, imagination, video and text meet at the edge of the abyss d’Agata’s works often peep into, creating a dense experience for the audience. You are led into the dark, the subconsciuos and the intimate without fear or shame, maybe with a dose of voyeurism provoked by the curiosity of a man who would never cross the line of taboo but would surely explore it – though powerless to acknowledge this even to himself.

Antoine d’Agata

Antoine d’Agata was born in 1961 in Marseille. He left France in his early twenties and after a series of travels settled in New York in the early 1990s, enrolling in a course at the International Center of Photography where he studied under the tutelage of Larry Clark and Nan Goldin while taking an internship at the Magnum editorial department. Contrary to expectations, on returning to France d’Agata did not start working as a photographer and his life went into a 4-year cameraless hiatus.

Returning to the profession in 1997, a year later he published his first photobooks: De Mala Muerte and Mala Noche. His work started selling almost immediately through the Vu Gallery. In 2001, after the publication of Hometown, d’Agata won the Niépce Prize for young photographers in France. This was followed by regular publications and a few films.

In 2008 d’Agata became a full member of Magnum Photos, and in 2009 he was the subject of a documentary film called The Cambodian Room: Situations with Antoine d'Agata.

His work deals with addiction, sex, personal obsessions, prostitution and other topics widely considered taboo.