Arnaud Montagard

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Arnaud Montagard [Portrait] Arnaud Montagard [b.1991, France] currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. His photography focuses on composition and details, creating an atmosphere that is often referencing the work of famous American realist painters such as Edward Hopper but also pioneering colour photographers such as Stephen Shore & William Eggleston. Often choosing to capture isolated figures caught in their own thoughts, staring out of view, Arnaud is always looking to bring the every day to life. Focusing on the details that might otherwise pass us by.

“These photographs by Arnaud Montagard could have been made decades ago. The most evident presence of the present in them is in the vitality of their love for the past, the active yearn toward what already lies behind. Commercial signs in outmoded fonts. Old motels, diners, rural gas stations. Cars with bodies that stretch long and low like the road they were built for.

For a young Frenchman, these are adopted memories, but the colour-suffused, shadow-dense framing is a native, rather than acquired tongue.

However much contemporary culture worships speed, the act of veneration is usually enacted in stillness. These photographs emerge from the road, but they are faithful to the pause. They are about deceleration in every sense. Today’s flit and clutter is nowhere to be found within these frames.“