VASANTHA YOGANANTHAN
MYSTERY STREET
Published by Chose Commune, 2023
Book size 26.5 x 29.5 cm
164 pages
Softcover
Languages English & French
Mystery Street begins and ends with children. Children playing, beaming and daydreaming. Children becoming. In his first North-American series, French photographer Vasantha Yogananthan stands next to the youth and gazes at their level.
With this project, Yogananthan makes a return to documentary photography, yet frees himself from prescriptions and pushes beyond the frame of tradition. Mystery Street works both as a conversation with the real and an escape into multiple narrative possibilities. If this body of work is mainly composed of portraits, Yogananthan's preferred genre, it is not intended as a comprehensive portrait of New Orleans.
Set under the burning sun of Louisiana, this body of work is a fable, it says something about reality, but uses crossroads. It is a comment on human behaviors and yet a transfiguration of the common.
Fragments of a lingering summer, Mystery Street provides us with a minimum of information about space, time, or place, aware of how some figuration bears great weight. In an effort to suspend or avoid overdetermination, he invites viewers to be caught by their own expectations. A turning point in Vasantha Yogananthan's practice, Mystery Street takes a caring look at kinship, at the intersection of body and environment.
This body of work will be shown at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation (Paris) from May to September 2023 and at the International Center of Photography (New York City) from September 2023 to January 2024. It was produced as part of Immersion, a French-American Photography Commission of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, in partnership with the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and the International Center of Photography.
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Mystery Street opens and ends with portraits of children. Children playing, thinking and watching us. Children in the making. For his first North American series, French photographer Vasantha Yogananthan invites us, over the course of a summer, to (re)see the world from a child's perspective.
With this project, Yogananthan returns to documentary photography while freeing himself from its codes and pushing the limits of the genre. Mystery Street functions both as a conversation with reality and an escape towards a multiplicity of possible stories. If this series is mainly composed of portraits, Yogananthan's favorite genre, it does not seek to paint a complete picture of New Orleans. Under the burning Louisiana sun, the work is understood as a fable, sketching reality while taking side roads. It mixes observation of human behavior and transfiguration of the ordinary.
Fragments of a summer that continues, Mystery Street shows the bare minimum in terms of place, time and space, aware of the weight that figurative elements can carry. Working to avoid any overdetermination, or to interrupt the process, the photographer invites viewers to let themselves be guided by their own imagination. Mystery Street marks a renewal in Yogananthan's practice and takes a look at friendship, at the intersection of bodies and their environment.
The Mystery Street series will be exhibited at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris from May to September 2023 and at the International Center of Photography in New York from September 2023 to January 2024. This work was produced as part of the Immersion program, a Franco-American photographic commission from the Fondation d'entreprise Hermès, in partnership with the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and the International Center of Photography.