JEAN-PIERRE KHAZEM

The Dummy's Lesson: Close-up of ventriloquist and dummy. 2000.

Para que esto no parezca un lugar reservado a pintores e ilustradores ya iba siendo hora de incluir un fotógrafo. Entre mis favoritos de los últimos años se encuentra Jean-Pierre Khazem, un tipo que encuentra aristas inquietantes en el naturalismo, a fuerza de estilizarlo, incluir de manera más o menos dosificada ingredientes grotescos en las escenas y, sobre todo, usar una de mis obsesiones particulares: las máscaras.

Woman in white dress in field.

The characters that populate Jean Pierre Khazem's photographs seem to inhabit a parallel world to ours. Where have they strayed in from? Toonland? Sesame Street? Helmut Newton's dream diary? Exploiting references ranging from 80s pop videos and fashion, to advertising and film, Khazem (Paris, 1968) cooks up an anarchic and nonsensical universe in which tension springs from the unlikely meeting between the cuddly and the psychotic.

Wreckless.

The principal conceit of Khazem's work is the mask, or large home-made prosthetic head: an elephant, a lion, a beaked and bug-eyed bird; most often a girl, not pretty, not exactly idealized, a smooth-skinned dead-eyed creature who has something of Japanese manga cartoons about her. Both the animals and the girls are deadpan, and give little away; their almost mournful features transfer easily from scenario to scenario.

Man watching woman on tanning table.

Sometimes, when the image is simple and located in the familiar 'real' world of buildings and traffic, Khazem's photographs invite conjecture about the role of the artist. That man in the lion's head in the street - who is he? We can't speak to him; he's a lion. Maybe that's Khazem under the mask. Maybe, as an artist, Khazem can adopt any disguise he likes; maybe he's strong as a lion and fragile as a thin-limbed boy underneath. It looks like a good thing to be able to walk down the street as a lion - but we're not sure. It's disconcerting.

Two doll faces lying on beach.

In the many photographs using animal heads, Khazem asks us to enter another world more fully. One series shows what seems to be the underbelly of Toonland: we're hanging out with a crazed bunny, an elephant, some mice; they're doing drug deals outside the bar, chilling by the pool table ('Miller Genuine', reads the neon sign in the background, archly), and generally going about their nocturnal and somewhat seedy business. This is children's television land on an off night; out of work cuddly toys scoring crack to pass the time. Khazem, with some humor, collides his generic fun-fur people with inner-city blight and a dash of film noir, and milks the threat.

Man seen walking outside window.

Meanwhile, over in the park, Twin Peaks meets Big Bird on Elm St. In a series of night-time images Khazem poses his bird-headed models in vaguely suggestive set-pieces: a gray-beaked ostrich woman in a purple acrylic top leans back against the bowl of a tree. Her exquisitely manicured hand peeks out from beneath her dress. A female form with a lilac-colored beak seems to do yoga in the park. The night shooting and dramatic lighting lend a surreal air to the proceedings. Even the real grass looks unreal. Whatever's going on in this shadowy public park (are they cruising for a bit of rough, these Children's-TV-land-glamour women? Or just waiting?), we the viewers are vicarious, intrigued and willing participants.

Three camels.

The strong sexual undertones in Khazem's work become most overt in his portraits of women. Scantily-clad models lounge about in cheap hotel rooms; they look desultory on pink bedspreads, or lean, apparently available in some sense, against flimsy film-set walls. Their expressionless masks suggest sadness, deflating the eroticism of dress or pose. Yet the pictures don't seem to be much concerned with unraveling the conventions of fashion or men's mag photography. These aren't Cindy Sherman-style explorations of female stereotypes - they're too humorous for that, only: who's laughing at whom? It might be that Khazem is seeing how far he can go in implying a generic porn situation (the props in his hotel rooms suggest low-budget movies), but in these images what wins out is a sense of the absurd. A Khazem woman on a pebbly beach is more entertaining when seen as a warped pastiche of a Bill Brandt nude than as a comment on fashion imagery.

Temptation.

Sometimes these pictures refreshingly poke fun, as in one image of a model (wearing a big girl's head mask) resting on a window ledge, her stilleto'd foot drawn up in classic photo magazine pose. Khazem has his cake and eats it too: enjoying the unabashed sensuality of a beautiful model in lingerie, yet underwriting and sanctioning it through the more unpredictable concerns of Art. The images tread a fine line, but it's a dark humor that saves the day.

Redhead playing with hair in bathroom mirror.

eyestorm: You once compared the way you create a character in your photographs to a mother carrying a baby for nine months - do you want your characters to seem real?

Jean-Pierre Khazem: Yes, but I am aiming for more than just putting real-looking masks on the people I photograph. For example, when the models are wearing the masks, they can't see. This means that they have to move differently. They forget their egos; they have to make sacrifices. They become something closer to their soul, and what's inside of them shows in the picture.

Two dolls in a dentist waiting room.

* Some of the earlier works - the 'lion' images, for example - took a long time to prepare, because I was making all the masks myself, and that was like a nine-month gestation. Now I work with a sculptor for the human masks, which makes it much faster.

Another thing is that, when I photograph real people, I sometimes look at the contact sheets and find that the models look strange in all the shots: I have trouble choosing an image when I haven't changed something about the model. The masks solve this problem; you have to look for different qualities in the photographs, and this is what interests me most.

Briquet. 1999.

* It seems like you work by constructing performance pieces and then taking photographs on the set.

Yes, completely. For the 'Llama Series', I made a one-minute film, which is exactly like the photographs. I had decided to make the film first, and after each sequence, each set-up, I made a photograph. The girl in that work - for the mask we made, we changed the color of her eyes and her hair, but otherwise the face looked like hers. How did she feel about it? She didn't care; she was 14 years old and it was like a game for her, though because the shoot took three days she'd had enough by the end.

Untitled V14. 1999.

* Do you want your pictures to tell a story, or are they more about what the viewer brings to them?

The Llama pictures are about the contrast between humans, stuffed animals, and masked faces: which are the most expressive? Why did I choose to work with llamas? Well, earlier I had worked with camels, for compositional reasons: if everything in the picture is camel-colored, I should use a camel. The llamas, though, were a kind of tribute to the Dalai Lama [laughs]. For the Broadway image, I placed a figure wearing a lion's head in New York, because there's something a bit wild about that city. I don't like the expression 'urban jungle', but there's a strong energy there, suitable for an animal like a lion.

Mona Lisa.

* How important is humor in your work?

Humor is a useful element to keep things from becoming too heavy, but other emotions are equally important. The oddness of an 'almost real' head - forcing the viewer to find expression in the body rather than the face - gives a quiet, enigmatic mystery to the photos. But please, feel free to laugh!

Man reclining back on bed in boxer shorts.

man sitting among weeds on beach.

Close-up of woman with doll's face.

Man sitting on trunk, carving into it with knife.

Man sitting back in chair.

Nude woman lying across dining room chairs, in front of table.

Nude woman sitting on the floor in front of chair.

Nude woman lying sideways on couch (bed?)

Nude woman sitting on chair reading.

Moose sitting on bench.

Moose sitting at picnic table.

Profile of ventriloquist and dummy.

A group of lions standing outside a movie theater.



Redhead girl standing in doorway of kitchen; mother preparing meat.

redhead sitting on steps. llama on other steps.

Redhead sitting on bed with another girl.

Family standing on front steps.

Couple in bed.

Woman sitting at table, man facing away.

The Glass Heads.

The Glass Heads2

Glass heads outside a massage parlor.

Two doll's face; one with back turned, one wearing sheer top

Doll face holding onto stick.

Doll standing on beach.

Bird lying on grass.

Close-up of doll's face, with leaf in hair.

posted by ANTONIO TRASHORRAS