Daniel Chatard is Franco-German documentary and portrait photographer based in Hanover, Germany.
In 2015, Daniel started his studies of photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover. In 2017, he interned as a photographer at the daily newspaper Weser-Kurier in Bremen. He did an exchange semester at the faculty of journalism at Tomsk State University (Russia) in 2018.
In his work, Daniel has been mostly interested in the relationship between individuals and their societies, exploring how collective identities shape the human experience.
Прогулка / Progulka
For about half a year I have lived in Tomsk, Russia.
A city like an island in the Siberian vastness, of normal size, with normal people, nothing much around. From afar, Russia and Siberia had seemed huge, powerful, unfamiliar.
In my perception characterized by headlines of the media, reports on political tension, on a weak opposition against a powerful government. I was keen to find out if what I thought to know about the state was to be found in its society too.
Прогулка is the Russian word for a walk. On the search for answers to my abstract questions, my walks led into the nowhere, from one end of the city to the other. I made observations from a distance, embracing my role as a stranger in this society.
Not much going on in the streets. Fugitive encounters, people silently passing by. Glimpses that don‘t meet each other. Finding comfort in seclusion. One that seeks freedom retreats, to the flat, the nature, the garden. Moving closer to what made me curious, I kept wondering if I would yet grasp anything at all.
To view more of Daniel Chatard’s work please visit his website.