Lighting in Separation and Unity - Annotation
This annotation discusses an image:
Raynaud de Lage, Christophe. “Grensgaval (Borderline)”, 2017. Festival d’Avignon, www. festival-avignon.com/en/shows/2017/grensgeval-borderline.
Raynaud de Lage, photographer for Festival d’Avignon shows, took several photos that were arranged chronologically on the website. He highlights actors’ movements, shifts in set and lighting, and the change in tones that accompany these staging elements. The first displayed photo on the website depicts multicolour abstract screens, in front of which actors in fluid dark clothing dance. One “European” in a white shirt stands observing them. The lighting is that of cool directional tips, showcasing their shadows. In the following photos, the lighting varies between cool and warm. Several shots show the ensemble beneath the image of a judge, sometimes appearing to be holding their faces up with planks. There are close ups of the ensemble members, whose expressions are always neutral. The photographs go from showcasing multimedia to emphasizing the walls descending upon the cast where they are mostly on the ground. As the photos proceed, the Europeans as separate and above becomes less emphasized, and warm colours dominate. One photo stands out second to the end: a triangle of distressed bodies, climbing on each other, reaching to get to the top in the warm lighting. This is followed by a photograph of still bodies on the ground under cool lights.
The photographs sometimes place the refugees handling the planks together beneath the mediated faces of Europeans who observe them; this observation is emphasized by their black and white video being superimposed from the sidelines. The red lighting in photo three accentuates the violence of this relationship as the refugees visually “hold up” the European. Cool vs warm lighting achieves the distinct separation between them—the gap between black and white media and real warm colours seems insurmountable in this photo. As the photoset goes on, however, the Europeans are integrated into the mass of refugees. The colours become warmer, and the faces of the refugees are showcased as well as the faces of the Europeans. The last photograph, in which the refugee’s form a pile in desperation to reach the sky, evokes an image of drowning or climbing to the top of bodies, which is the reality for some refugees, and finally gives the refugee’s freedom of expression. In the photos proceeding this, their faces were a neutral slate. The final photo shows no media imposition, no sidelined tables, but a collection of all bodies, lying still on the coolly lit ground, emphasizing that life and death do, in the end, make us all the same.
