Biography

Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen was born in Pirmasens, Germany in 1970. He studied visual arts at the Academies of Art in Mainz and Prague; the Sarojini Naidu School in Hyderabad, India and philosophy at the Universities of Cologne and Mainz. In 2013 he participated in a Roger Ballen Masterclass, was awarded the Prix Voies Off, Arles and became a member of Deutsche Fotografische Akademie and the ‘Photography Show Award’ at the FORMAT Festival in Derby (2015). Since 2014, Boris is a member of Deutsche Fotografische Akademie.

His photomedia work has been shown internationally in institutions and festivals including Fridericianum Kassel, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, CCP Melbourne, ACP Sydney, EMAF Osnabrück, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Edinburgh Art Festival, FORMAT Festival Derby, Encontros da Imagem Braga, FestFoto Porto Alegre, Photolux Biennale Lucca, Singapore International Photography Festival, Chobi Mela Dhaka, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, PhotoVisa Krasnodar, Voies Off Festival Arles and Noorderlicht Groningen.

Since 2004, Boris has lectured internationally at universities and art academies, such as Victorian College of the Arts / University Melbourne, Photography Studies College Melbourne, Akademie für Bildende Künste Mainz and Hochschule Furtwangen. In addition, he has given workshops at institutions, such as Goethe Institut Gulf-Region, Pathshala South Asian Media Institute Dhaka, Escola d'Art i Superior de Disseny d'Olot, Centre for Contemporary Photography Melbourne, RMIT University Melbourne, Monash University Melbourne, PhotoWerkBerlin, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt and Westlicht Wien.

The Other Side is a collaboration work between Boris Eldagsen and Tanvir Taolad

An Expedition Into The Memory of Mankind

In the psychology of the mind, the Other refers to the unconscious side, to silence, insanity and God. With this work Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen and Dhaka-based artist Tanvir Taolad travel to outer limits: inside & outside, here & beyond, conscious & unconscious, heaven & hell. Their collaboration brings together Western and Eastern approaches to defining the deep unknown: Us. A blood drop-in space.

Working purely from their archives, Eldagsen & Taolad use their experimental skills of fusing and condensing photographs to create images that dig deeper into the human condition. This is not a remix. It is an expedition into the memory of mankind, haunted by hope. The work is shown as a site-specific installation and premiered at the Indian Photography Festival Hyderabad on September 2018, followed by The Other Side [Hope vs Fear] at Kochi-Muziris Biennale / Water Town Fest 2018/19.

In 2019, The Other Side got shortlisted for Gomma Grant and Prix Voies Off.

Tanvir Taolad is a Dhaka-based artist born in Narayanganj, Bangladesh (1987). He studied fine art at Narayanganj Fine Art Academy and photography at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. Influenced by everything and anything, his work explores inner reality, the unconscious, to see what is beyond the physical world.
He exposes raw, untraditional forms of vulnerability, based on fantasy, nightmares, hallucination and daydream imagination. Blending the real with the artificial, Taolad disorients the viewer and questions conventions of perception to open up a rather spiritual state. In 2015 he curated Boris’ work for a group show, and Boris was deeply impressed by the originality of the curation and the deep understanding it showed. They have stayed in contact ever since and started to collaborate in May 2017. They showed their collaborative work at Indian Photo Festival Hyderabad and Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

Boris Eldagsen’s night photography explores the limits of depiction. Rather than exploring stories, a place or a person, his work hijacks and transforms the external reality, to paint a reality beyond time and space: that of the unconscious.

Not unlike Goethe's Faust, Eldagsen pursues "whatever holds the world together in its inmost folds" to create pictures that are inaccessible to the rational mind, compelling the viewer to turn to their own memories and feelings. Thus he titles his photographs POEMS.

Working in this paradoxical way, Eldagsen can hardly be attributed to a school of photography. Without excessive materials or digital effects, he combines the techniques of street and staged photography to create images that sit between painting, film and theatre. Transferring this quality to the presentation of his work, he creates site-specific installations using a variety of formats from wallpaper to video to create an experience in which reality becomes fluid and visitors can walk through images into an inner space.