Historic Influence

Theatre, cinema, painting and photography coalesce in French photographer Nicolas Dhervillers’ (b. 1981) Hommages series. These renditions of monumental landscapes allude to the grandes machines of genre and history painting. Dhervillers pays homage to the greats, spanning Baroque, Realist and late Pre-Raphaelite painting from Nicolas Poussin and Gustave Courbet to Frank Cowper. Many of the characters appear to have been plucked from their parent painting – a monk in a cassock mirrors Cowper’s St. Francis of Assisi and The Heavenly Melody, deposited in unfamiliar surroundings. Dhervillers depicts the pervasive historical fabric of present-day landscapes, through which our collective memory summons anachronistic figures. The impression of these photographs existing outside of time is intensified by digital processing that lends a theatrical, stage-lit quality. Dhervillers has participated in Paris Photo Fair and documenta 13. www.nicolasdhervillers.com.