The Photo Saint Germain festival features 46 exhibitions ,all situated in that neighborhood of the French capital. On this occasion, we wish to present a selection of galleries, bookstores and institutions participating in the event. Among them : the Musée d’ Orsay ,The Musée de l’ Orangerie ,The Hungarian Institut , the Galeries Berthet-Aittouarès, Bernard Dulon, Plac’art Photo and the Signatures bookstore.
• Musées d’Orsay & Musée de l’Orangerie
Who’s afraid of women photographers ? 1839-1945
1st Part : 1839 – 1917 (Orangerie)
2nd Part : 1918 – 1945 (Orsay)
The main ambition of the show « Qui a peur des femmes photographes ? » [Who’s Afraid of Women Photographers?] presented jointly by the Musée de l’Orangerie and the Musée d’Orsay from 14 October 2015 to 24 January 2016, is to break free from the still widely shared idea according to which photography, a mechanical/chemical tool to reproduce reality would be a mere technical object and as such a business for males only. Indeed, women, as amateurs from mid-upper class and more and more often at the turning of 19th and 20th century professionals, have played a more important part in the history of photography than they have in that of the traditional Fine Arts. Builds on new researches and numerous histories of photography that, over forty years have reassessed their contribution, this exhibition is the first in France .
From October 14th, 2015 to January 24th, 2016
Musée d’Orsay
1, rue de la Légion d’Honneur
75007 Paris
France
www.musee-orsay.fr
Musée de l’Orangerie
Place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries
75001 Paris
France
www.musee-orangerie.fr
• Institut Hongrois
Photo collage and photomontage in Hungarian art
The techniques of photomontage and photocollage have developed in one of the most important schools of the 20th century, the Bauhaus, which included a considerable number of Hungarian artists and architects. Later, these methods were borrowed by another multidisciplinary artistic movement, the surrealism, which greatly influenced the Hungarian artists of the European school in the 1940’s.
The exhibition offers a selection of pieces realised by some of the artist-pioneers of the Hungarian artistic scene, who revolutionised photography such as Lajos Kassák, Endre Bálint, Dezső Korniss and Lajos Vajda.
The curator of the exhibition is Krisztina Passuth, art historian, university professor, author of several art history books, like Kurt Schwitters (1978), Moholy-Nagy (1982), Les avant-gardes de l’Europe Centrale (1988) or Étienne Béothy (2010).
5 November – 12 December 2015
92, rue Bonaparte
75006 Paris
France
www.parizs.balassiintezet.hu
• Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès
Mario Giacomelli, Photographie Métaphysique 1970 – 1995
Mario Giacomelli (1925-2000) is mainly known for, the Seminarians playing in the snow or the famous Scanno Boy, considered by John Sarkowsky, former curator of the MOMA, as one of the most important pictures in the history of the medium. His work however is not limited to humanistic interpretation.
Him who lived all his life in Senigallia, on the Adriatic coast, and produced most of his photographs in the Marche region, background of his very personal “theater”. Has developed an exclusive work filled by a fantastic tune.
This fourth exhibition by the gallery is devoted to the period of maturity of the Italian master, whose taste for poetry comes from a transcendental reading of nature: “What interests me is not understanding the subject but to communicate in an area of freedom … a magical area that give free rein to self-analysis “.
A symbolic language that is celebrated by the series presented, Metamorphosis of the earth, mental projections of landscapes, Bando, abstract and graphic compositions made from metal construction poles, or in this memory I would like to tell, a metaphysical fable where he takes the stage with shop window models, stuffed animals and salvage junk.
5 November – 18 December 2015
14, rue de Seine
75006 Paris
France
www.galerie-ba.com
• Galerie Bernard Dulon
Walker Evans
In 1935 the MoMA in New York commissioned Walker Evans, who was just 38 years old, to create a series of photographs of 450 of the 603 masks, sculptures and objects of African Art presented in their exhibition “African Negro Art” (*). This ground-breaking event, the first exhibit financed by an art museum rather than an ethnographic museum, marked the apotheosis of the West’s expressed interest in what was then called “negro” arts. Documenting this exhibition allowed the MoMA to extend its reach beyond the 60 000 visitors it would attract. By objectively capturing this sculptural art also called “primal”, Walker Evans knew he was contributing to perpetuate a bygone culture or one on the verge of extinction. This spirit would permeate the rest of his work.
The photographer dedicated months to this assignement, spending hours in the museum each night after closing, setting aside other projects so this one could be completed. He used a neutral white background and diffuse lighting which swept over the objects during the shoot to avoid shadows. His objective style, which he abandoned ocasionally to hone in on a detail, submitted itself to the requirements of his subject matter. The photographer sought to highlight the sculptural quality of the objects which had a decisive influence on modern art.
The gelatin silver prints presented in this exhibition were created in 1935 in Walker Evans Bethune Street studio, in New York.
* Seventeen portfolios of 477 prints were created at the request of the MoMA. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibited the entire portfolio in 2000. The same exhibit was presented at the Musée du Louvre seven years later.
7 – 22 November 2015
10, rue Jacques Callot
75006 Paris
France
www.dulonbernard.fr
• Le Plac’art Photo
Yoshiichi Hara, Stripper Zukan
Since 1975 Yoshiichi Hara has made more than fifteen hundred photographs of strip-tease artists – and Stripper Zukan is regarded as the starting point of this lifelong project. In 1981 Hara held his first ‘stripper’ exhibition at the Ginza Nikon Salon Gallery in Tokyo – featuring the photographs of two hundred strippers created after visiting some three hundred Tokyo-area strip clubs. The next year he published Stripper Zukan, which comprised only sixty-five portraits from that series, a book inspired by E.J. Bellocq’s Storyville Portraits.
One immediately sees that each of the book’s portraits is from the clubs’ ‘greenrooms’. The greenroom functions as a portal between the stripper’s often-mundane life and the bright stage-lights – a place where a woman metamorphoses into a stripper. Despite the photographer’s presence the women of Stripper Zukan appear relaxed, innocent, and defenseless – alone in their greenroom, protected from the outside world, their true selves before becoming fantasy objects.
In short, Hara understood that strippers each have individual lives behind the bright lights – and he recognized that behind their attitude and toughness, these women, who used their own bodies to earn a living, had everyday, often ordinary, lives, needs, and dreams.
11 – 29 november 2015
12, rue de l’Eperon
75006 Paris
France
www.placartphoto.fr
• Librairie Signatures
Willy Kessels (1898-1974). Nus, Architecture, Portraits, Photogrammes, Collages
Willy Kessels, French speaker of Flanders, is one of the main representatives of modernist photography in Belgium in the 30s. His nudes, tight centered and with a particular light, are doubtless the most well-known aspects of his work. It is a subject that he studied all through his career. The exhibition presents some but also approaches other aspects of his work. As many European photographers of this period, Kessels declines possible uses of the new medium. He shows of course portraits, but also industrial shots, architectural views, advertising images and answers to publishing orders. In the artistic field, he will never stop, between objectivity and subjectivity, questioning the medium by making photograms, photo collages, and photomontages till the end of the 50s.
7 – 22 november 2015
17, rue Jacob
75006 Paris
France
www.librairiesignatures.com
Photo Saint Germain
Du 07 au 22 Novembre 2015
Quartier Saint Germain
75006 Paris
France
http://www.photosaintgermain.com
