Star Wars comes to Dubai. This is the final installment of Cedric Delsaux’s The Dark Lens trilogy – previous works have been shot in Paris and Lille, France – is shown in Dubai’s The Empty Quarter Fine Art Photography Gallery.
Elie Domit, Creative Director of the gallery, had contacted Delsaux after he had seen his previous artwork and proposed a series set in Dubai. The pair worked together for six months on the project, in collaboration with Paris-based acte2galerie.
"Aiming to show the mindset of science fiction as a popular culture psyche of the human race, the exhibition is certainly not a joke," says Domit. "This is not like putting a collage of images together," he adds.
"The photographer imagines that world where reality and fiction almost collide. Dubai happens to be a very particular city in the world."
"Dubai has moved so fast, to the point that some of the projects here, if they’re not science fiction, what would you call them?"
Delsaux visited the emirate in February last year and shot photos of DIFC, workshops, parking lots, and natural areas in the desert with Dubai’s skyline in the background, recognising that these places could serve as the ideal cinematic backdrop for the Star Wars characters.
The photographer borrowed Star Wars paraphernalia such as characters and models of ships from collectors all around the world. After lighting the objects to correspond with the light on the photos of the Dubai sceneries, Delsaux photographed them and blended the images together using Photoshop.
George Lucas agreed to Delsaux using the Star Wars models for his fine art project with Lucas even agreeing to write the introduction for Delsaux’s planned limited edition art book, which is currently being planned.
Lots of pictures today (from all three parts of Delsaux’s trilogy) - 'gone tomorrow' are geeky fanboys I'm afraid.
