Photos from the Black star photo agency.
Article 6, Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere
photography
Studio Delton- Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
A studio that specialized in equestrian photography from 1864 until 1914. If you were a rider during those years you went to get your photo taken with your horse all decked out in your frills and top hat. The exhibition tells us that the horse as an animal was at its peak during Napoleon III's time. Noble but also very useful in the streets of Paris.
It was great to see the high quality of the glass collodion plates. The Delton studio made their business from their commercial portraits but they also contributed in photography's technology. They were able to capture the first horse race.
Dirk Braeckman- Sans mobile apparent-Le Bal
I came into this exhibition for a different reason. I always find a reason to go to "Le Bal" (especially for the food.) So I was heading downstairs to a talk, " Conversation with Daniel Blaufuks, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin and Ethan Levitas" on found-images and was struck by these dark panels. I didn't see them as photographs. The large panel on the first floor looks like it could have been drawn with charcoal. The photographs are almost black and their texture make one reflect on darkness.
After the talk, I read the descriptive panel which was not very clear to me. In his own words Dirk Braeckman "Photography is, for me, an almost obsessive attempt to scan, in my own way, everything around me, everything I meet, driven by the desire to give order to chaos. With or without a camera.”
I wonder, in this series at least, if that is how he looks at life?
as if looking through a gauze.
Henri Dauman-The Manhattan Darkroom- Palais d'Iena
A familiar space, the Palais d'Iena but a lesser known photographer, reports for "Paris Match" then "Life" Henri Dauman left Paris for New York in 1950. Portraits of Hollywood stars. Architectural photographs of New York. A vivid portrayal of America's past fifty years.
Alberto Garcia Alix, "Un horizonte falso", " un mundo traicionado"
Double exhibition at la Mep, "un horizonte falso" and at the galerie Kamel Mennour, "Un mundo traicionado."
Some of the photos overlap but what makes the Mep show stronger is the presence of Garcia Alix's peculiar titles. Autoretrato esnifando arena ( Autoportrait sniffant du sable), Mi memoria se he vuelto liquida ( ma mémoire est devenue liquide), Instante inventado para enfrentar lo futuro (Instant inventé pour affronter l'avenir) or Imapvido como una arana (impavide comme une araignée)
In the video he made for the exhibition he links these titles into a narrative, an internal dialogue. In an interview he explains it is called 'fake horizons' because photography isn't truth. The exhibit comprises black and white portraits, shadows of trees, self-portraits..
A Polite Fiction-Taryn Simon
Working like a futuristic archeologist Taryn Simon reveals what lies inside Frank Gehry's structure, the materials, plaster, concrete,stone participate with the workers testimonies. If during your visit, you looked around in amazement and wondered what the walls, stairs, ramps were made of, Simon's project gives you the answer. And more.
A Portuguese worker draws a goat repeatedly. Another has a crush on someone on the construction site. One purposefully leaves a cigarette behind for someone passing by to smoke it. A prayer so that there will be no fights on site. A man amused by a misspelling "Luis Vuitton". A drawing of a penis.
After all the press and hype around the LVMH building ending the visit with these personal footprints gave the Fondation Louis Vuitton a very sympathetic human side. It has been a lot about Frank Gehry and this in a way is a tribute to those who built his creation with their hands.
Le Sel de la Terre- Wim Wenders Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
A documentary that looks at Sebastiao Salgado's entire photographic career. Everything starts, for Salgado the photographer, with the countryside in Brazil where he grew up. His father's farm dried up then years and years later after planting 2.5 million trees Salgado's forest came back to life. The project for the savior of this region happened when Sebastiao Salgado came back from reporting the human atrocities of Rwanda, Congo. Hopeless after seeing innumerable deaths before his eyes, his last project "Genesis"
Although he is a keen explorer his roots and identity lay in Brazil's soil.
Throughout the documentary, we see the black and white photos that for the most part we've seen before but what makes it special is Sebastao's voice (with its accent) describing his experiences traveling to the far reaches of the world. As spectators we see the photographer and Sebastiao's face fading in and out talking about the photo. Wim Wenders, invisible except the shots of both them looking through his archives in his studio.
The idea of the film originated when his son, around thirty years old, decided to follow his father on trips to get to know him better. Wim Wenders, a passionate photographer and collector joined the team. Wim Wenders discovered Salgado's work in New York where he bought one of his portraits, a blind Touareg woman from 1984. The exhibition at Polka gallery rue Saint-Gilles shows most photos one has seen in the film, the exhibition being curated by Wim Wenders as well, but with Wenders personal comments.
Garry Winogrand-Jeu de Paume
With one third of the photos developed for this exhibition, this is the first big exhibit of Winogrand since 1987.
Better known for his street photography of New York in the 1950's and 1960's he was nonetheless a prolific photographer, leaving behind an astounding number of undeveloped films when he died at the age of 56.
Here we see his close-ups of pedestrians, interrupting a couple's kiss or surprising a monkey that's in the back of a car. He's in the street and the subject often looks at him, us, with defiance, surprise. Traveling through the United States, images of La Guardia airport.
With the years, the mood turns a bit less gleeful.