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Neil Hamon, (Jersey, 1975) presents in his first solo show in Spain a set of works carried out between the years 2002 – 2004.

The British artist based in London shows under the framework of the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts, PHE06, one of his most significant series: Living History Archive.

Living History Archive consists of a series of portraits of members of military societies who dedicate a large part of their time and economic resources  to recreate and evoke different historical events. The result is images of fictional characters outfitted with authentic paraphernalia reminiscent of actual characters from the American Civil War and World War II.

The portraits of these characters that Neil makes in an apparently nostalgic way (using sepia and b/w) hide the true intention and motivation of the artist, revealing the absurdity of the activities of the members of these societies that far from being involved with the historical facts that they take pains to represent, they only dedicate themselves to participating in this kind of adult game.  This devalued commitment to the past is emphasized through taxidermy and still lifes that the author attaches to the photographs and converse with them.

The exhibition is completed with the piece entitled “A postumus life”  a video accompanied by a photograph that shows the artist himself making a taxidermy of a hare, taxidermy that is an attempt to bring life to the dead and has been taken from its natural environment. Both this work and the Living History Archive series reflect on the relationships between seduction, representation and reality. Hamon focuses his interest on the means of representation based on the description of reality through the connection with the subject they represent. In short, works that are based on said claim to function as exact representations.