04 october 2022, Wouter van den Eijkel
At a Moment’s Notice – new work by the Sanchez Brothers
A red leather suitcase floating on the water, a car on fire in a mountainous area, a boarded up house with the words Broken Heart on it and a banquet hall for a wedding from which everyone seems to have run away. These images could have been movie stills lifted from a thriller, but they are photos of the Canadian brothers Carlos and Jason Sanchez, the masters of mise en scene photography. The brothers present a new series of works at TORCH Gallery after 10 years.
Carefully orchestrated tension
The brothers from Montreal (Carlos born 1976, Jason 1981) have been focusing on staged photography for twenty years. They meticulously prepare each photo. This not only results in a perfect set design, but also in images with cinema-quality production values. It's just never stills from romcoms that you haven't seen before. The photos of the Sanchez Brothers are more reminiscent of a proper thriller like The Silence of the Lambs or a David Lynch movie. It never gets cosy, instead the tension is palpable.
In the catalogue that accompanies New Works, the brothers call their method 'very controlled photography'. To give an idea of the level of control they exert over their work: for At a Moment's Notice - the hastily abandoned hall where a wedding party was underway- they rented a hall in a hotel for 3 weeks during the lockdowns of 2020. They furnished them from top to bottom: from the gold-coloured decorations, tables, plates, glasses and cutlery to the pieces of chocolate cake and half-empty champagne flutes. And then turn some tables, creating the illusion that either a brawl has broken out or everyone is fleeing from impending doom.
Carlos & Jason Sanchez, At a Moment's Notice, 2020, TORCH Gallery
In addition, the props are so well displayed that each table tells you who may have sat there and what their relationship was on the basis of objects left behind. Such as the table on which is still a Lumix pocket camera. The kind of camera that is only used by people who have never made the switch to the smartphone or can't handle one. There is also a stuffed animal. Would a grandparent with grandchild have been sitting here? We'll never know, but this is what the Sanchez brothers are all about: they hand us stills from a story that you can finish yourself.
Another good example of this is Volunteer Search Party. First, only the man with the fluorescent vest in the middle of the photo stands out, then you notice a man who is trying to make a hole in the frozen stream, only then you notice the others and the penny drops: you look at a crew carrying out a search after a missing person or a murder. Something is very wrong, that much is clear, yet it remains unclear what exactly is going on.
Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Volunteer Search Party, 2020, TORCH Gallery
The moment after
According to gallery manager Jorre Both, the timbre of the works has hardly changed over the past 20 years. In recent years, however, the emphasis has shifted from the act itself, such as the assault in Everyday or the overflowing sink in Overflowing Sink, to the moment after. Perhaps because this approach raises at least as many questions.
Also, not every work is fully staged. The brothers chanced upon the boarded-up house with Broken Heart written on it. The image has exactly the same eerie atmosphere as the other images in New Works. This also applies to the unnatural pose of the woman who wants to get off in Woman on a tram. The photo was recently found in their archives and you can understand why they chose to publish the photo as a work. The woman who wants to get out is wearing angular clothes and something about her posture makes you doubt whether the moment was staged or not.
Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Woman on a Tram, 2003, TORCH Gallery
Check in and out
At the top left of the screen you can still see the old HTM logo of the Hague Public Transport system. On the right you can spot a stamping machine for fare cards. So there was no card swiping cards to check in or out yet. The photo is indicative of Torch's long-term collaboration with the brothers, as the it was probably taken a previous visit to the Netherlands, likely at one of their earlier shows.
Yet, the last show in the Netherlands was a decade ago. This is mainly, what else could it be, due to the fact that the brothers have been preoccupied with directing assignments in recent years. For example, they worked on a project about the studio of fellow Montrealite Leonard Cohen, in which they brought the singer back to life as a hologram, and on their own directorial debut, Allure, starring Evan Rachel Wood in the lead role.
New Works by Carlos & Jason Sanchez can be seen at TORCH Gallery in Amsterdam until 15 October.
