In 2014 Thibaut Kinder began collecting memory cards found in end of the
line flea markets, on the Internet or in second hand electronics stores
for his project “Exhumed photographs”. The arrival of digital processing
and the increased storage capacity offered by memory cards like Secure
Digital (SD) has transformed our way of taking pictures, making each us
into apprentice photographers and more or less compulsive in our picture
taking. These SD cards have been adapted to work with the multitude of
devices that surround us and have become multi-purpose receptacles.
Sébastien
Leseigneur considers them to be the “ideal data
holdalls” in which we have a tendency to forget what we've stored. At the
same time, like each word published on the Internet, each email sent, the
smallest of our digital actions and gestures are archived and stockpiled
willy-nilly and will stay that way, impervious to any possible erasure.
After they have been passed through the proper software, the abandoned
cards quickly and simply reveal their contents, deleted but not erased. In
this way Thibaut Kinder has collected some 180,000 photographs to date.
Exhuming photographs brings up questions of survival and memory or rather
memories. By presenting these meticulously isolated and organized photos
on Instagram or Tumblr—images that had normally been assigned to
oblivion—Thibaut Kinder offers them an unexpected vital prolongation and
whole new meanings.
An Egyptian Story brings together photographs chosen from among
14,640 shots. The pretext for a publication in the form of a bound edition
makes it possible to oppose the continuous ux of social networks with
another rhythm, one that each person can appropriate through their perusal
of the work. Though they are drawn from 14 different SD cards, the
photographs are in effect presented together in order to advance an
alternative narrative. With respectful modesty Thibaut Kinder reveals a
world through ashes of the unknown lives he has discovered and, through
the vocabulary he uses to share a new and enigmatic story with us.
Born 1984 in Thionville, Thibaut Kinder lives and works in Paris.
