Project Description

These intermixed photographs of Tangier, and Cohen’s home city, New York, all
originated as three-inch-square polaroids – a discontinued format. Cohen describes
the work as «part of the search for a permanent ghost.» It can be hard to tell if the
subjects are being built or destroyed; even the newest constructions are, temporarily,
monuments to the ephemeral, at once colossal and frail. Seemingly deserted places
are actually populated by astonishingly adaptive inhabitants. The photographs (and
accompanying film made with Luc Sante) are a study of things caught in the delicate
balance between past and future. This future, and the landscape itself, is often
dictated by the obscured but not invisible ‘hand’ of capital and the state, no longer
bound by location or nationality.

Courtesy of the artist. Thanks to TAMAAS, Yto Barrada, Oliver Laxe, Karim Nabil, Simona Schneider, Megan Cump, Griffin Editions, East Frames

April 2011