Marc K is an artist and a designer of French-Lebanese and Armenian descent. He was raised in Saudi Arabia, in a Dutch compound sited in a desert of the Eastern Province. As a child, he recalls the peculiar smell of his housing unit, flanked with synthetic carpets, brown furniture and prefab walls. Planted in the desolated beauty of the desert, the compound, a suburban eyesore, offered a paradoxical experience - somewhat unpleasant, but also reassuring. (...) His photographs, both serene and disquieting, conjure a sense of "pleasurable discomfort", as he himself puts it. Serendipitous details are charged with visual intrigue. Images are snapped quietly, as though they were suspended, both literally and metaphorically. They stand still in the manner of a whisper, akin to holding one’s breath. Central to Kandalaft's photography are the notions of silence; of omissions, and of transient passages. His imagery is haunted by the absence of protagonists belonging to the many stories that may lay unfolded, within or outside the frame. The composition, almost always taken from a standing position, is both unforgivably controlled and honest. Sans artifice, Kandalaft offers an unflinching vision of man-made and natural landscapes of an unsettling beauty. In that respect, Kandalaft borrows from contemporary deadpan and genre aesthetics while adding a certain depth to the formalism of such traditions. Frontal views, pristine in their execution, nevertheless relate a timeless sense of mystery. The light, flirting with the scenery, transmits a slow, at times sticky atmosphere. For Kandalaft, such contemplative devices work as a gateway to a form of "self-presence". They are the trigger of a transient, emotional state through which the photographer transmits a subjective, yet most direct experience of the place. (...) Irreverent and sublime, America's ugliness, and dazzling beauty, never fully surrender to the voyeur's plea.