Along the French roads… (Part 3)

Raymond Depardon’s France shows the villages and landscapes of our sweet childhood, but of course his vision is only partial and incomplete. France is not just an old country with small “bar-tabacs” and closed local post offices. France is a lot more than that.  So let’s follow some additional contemporary photographers to discover something else…

Let’s explore the multitude of faces of a changing country, lets it surprise our selves. Let’s travel through its cities, its frontiers, coast, suburbs and discover its beauty and its scars…

France 14

The perfect follow up to Raymond Depardon’s France is to look into the work of the young generation of photographers from the France 14 project he initiated and which was exhibited last year in Arles (www.rencontres-arles.com)
Here is a video (in French again…) presenting the 14 photographers and their 14 projects: http://arles.photographie.com/?p=248

Of course I cannot present them all here, so I decided to focus only on the work of Cyrus Cornut as he takes us through a journey in the hidden parts of the country…

Cyrus Cornut

‘Voyage en peripherie, les petits enfants du sciecle’ : Travel in the outskirts, the children of the century

For this project Cyrus Cornut decided to explore a France no one wants to show, a France we often forget unless sad or violent events put it in the news. It’s a new face of France built quickly and irrationally, but home to thousands of people. Fragile or even frightening (because we tend to be scared by what we don’t know) it’s the face of a France that is used to express most of the evils of today’s French society. But when we look closely at Cyrus Cornut’s images, we see also life, beauty and hope.

Cité de la Saussaie, Saint Denis.

Les Presles, Epinay sur Seine 2008. FRANCE

Chateaux d'eau, Villejuif, France 2008.

Les Choux, Créteil 2009. FRANCE

Cité Pablo Picasso, dites les tours nuages. Nanterre, France 2010.

  More images and more projects by Cyrus Cornut on: www.cyruscornut.com

Harry Gruyaert

‘Rivages’ (shorelines) is an exploration project by Magnum photographer Harry Guyaert. It’s a journey along the coasts, along the French costs and much further. But France has a particular place in Harry Gruyaert’s heart and project. We discover here a poetic, elegant country where the subtle colors and dreamy composition create a enigmatic landscape where we’d like to lose our minds and drift along.

FRANCE. Aquitaine region. Pyrenees-Atlantiques departement. Town of Biarritz. 2000.

FRANCE. Picardie region. Somme departement. Town of Le Crotoy, on the mouth of the Somme, seen from the village of Hourdel. Baie de Somme. 1991.

FRANCE. Picardy region. Bay of the Somme River. 1991.

FRANCE. Picardie region. Somme departement. Baie de Somme. Cap Hornu. 1991.

FRANCE. Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. Pas-de-Calais departement. Berck beach. 2007.

  More on Harry Gruyaert: www.magnumphotos.com/

And a beautiful video about Rivages: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbDMkhzvSdU

Patrizia Di Fiore

Patrizia Di Fiore was born in Italy but moved to France when she was 20 years old. She travels a lot but her approach doesn’t belong to the classic documentary style. She uses a medium format camera and tries to capture the atmosphere, the colors and sensations of the landscapes she crosses. In her photographs we feel escape, loneliness, the silence of the journey, we feel contemplation and the meditation of the road. Through her camera she reveals again another one of France’s multiple characters…

Pyrénées Atlantiques

Pyrénées Atlantiques

Pyrénées Atlantiques

Autour de Rouen

Autour de Rouen

More on Patrizia Di Fiore: www.patriziadifiore.com

And if you want to discover more photographs of French landscapes, I recommend that you have a look at the website of the Transphotographiques festival, organized every year in May/June in Lille, North of France:www.transphotographiques.com/2011/

Along the French roads… (Part 2)

After a long introduction (along the Frenchroads… Part 1), I’d like to believe that like me you were looking forward to discovering French landscapes and see what France really has to offer. Everyone knows about the mystic glamour of the French Riviera and the envious image of Paris, presumably romantic capital of the world. But who knows about its tortuous roads, its deserted countryside, its historic villages and its colorful old local shops? So let’s immerse ourselves in the French territory by following French photographers who have explored its deepest and best kept secrets…
 

Raymond Depardon

The best way to start this series is by looking at Raymond Depardon’s photography. He was part of the DATAR group of photographers and since then has continued photographing his beloved country. During 5 years alone on the road in his van, with his large format camera, Raymond Depardon traveled through the French territory to draw the real portrait of a country outside of its touristic clichés. What he gives us to see is the backstage, the behind the scenes, the soul and heart of a country. If you’re French, it’s a France that you know, maybe the France you grew up in or where your grand parents live, where you went on holidays as a kid. It’s the France of our memories, a France everyone has seen, a France we love but never photograph. Grey and colorful, melancholic and joyful, attached to its tradition but also ready to reinvent itself, it’s a territory of contrast where mutations happen slowly. Depardon’s images bring us closer to a part of ourselves we almost forgot. They mirror the contradictions of the country: familiar and surprising, contemporary and timeless, banal and aesthetically beautiful. La France de Raymond Depardon was exhibited in Paris end of last year and a beautiful book recalls Depardon’s adventures along the French roads…

« La France de Raymond Depardon » © Raymond Depardon / Magnum photos / CNAP

Cachet-Commercy – Meuse

Realite – vers Issoire (Puy-de-Dome)

“La France de Raymond Depardon” © Raymond Depardon / Magnum photos / CNAP

“La France de Raymond Depardon Raymond Depardon / Magnum photos / CNAP” ©

“La France de Raymond Depardon Raymond Depardon / Magnum photos / CNAP” ©

“La France de Raymond Depardon Raymond Depardon / Magnum photos / CNAP” ©

Nievre – Neuvy-sur-Loire © Raymond Depardon

More images on Magnum site: www.magnumphotos.com

A great article with audio explanations by Depardon (in French): www.rfi.fr

An interview (in French): www.lefigaro.fr

And a few citations I particularly like and that I tried to translate in English:

‘Half of France is blue and half of France is yellow’

‘In Paris colour is vulgar, elsewhere it’s resistance’
‘A Paris la couleur c’est vulgaire, mais ailleurs c’est de la resistance.’

‘Les fruits et legumes c’est la France d’aujourdhui.’
‘Fruits and vegetables, that’s today’s France.’

Along the French roads… (Part 1)

Everyone even slightly interested in the History of Photography and especially here in the United States will come across what is called ‘New Topographics’. This movement in photographic art started here in the 70s and is named after an exhibition held in 1975 in the International Museum of Photography: New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. 

Stephen Shore, 2nd Street and South Main Street, Kalispell, Montana, August 22, 1974

Mostly featuring the work of American photographers it represents a new approach to landscape photography where the banal, the uniform, suburbs, industrial development, roads become the main photographic subject.  Far away from the imagery of grandiose American nature and far away from ‘decisive moment’ social documentary, this movement is about finding aesthetic and hidden beauty in the dull, the boring, the empty. It’s about depicting what we see everyday without even looking, what appears in our peripheral vision at a crossroad, on the side of a street without us even noticing. But the impact and the influence that this movement has on today’s photography also seems to express the fact that these (at the time surprising) landscape images also convey a political message questioning ‘man alterations’ on nature.  

Robert Adams, Tract House, Westminster, Colorado, 1973

Anyway my objective is not to retrace the history of the movement or of this specific exhibition, which is by the way currently traveling through Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Spain – unfortunately I missed it as it was in San Francisco just before I arrived…) But as I explore the images and approaches that define today’s contemporary photography I couldn’t avoid noticing the strong influence of such a movement on young photographers and I guess especially in America. In addition to the  undeniable aesthetic of these photographs I started to understand their main value through the interesting testimony they leave us. Depicting things as they are forces us to see things as they really are, to better look around us and question our relationship to our environment. 

And as I explored the American environment through ‘Topographics’ photographs I started to wonder what my own country looks like through the lens of ‘Topographics’ photographers? What do the French altered landscapes look like? So here are some answers from a girl freshly arrived in the United States looking back at the environment where she grew up. 

Mission photographique de la DATAR

The first and amazingly interesting example of the American New Topographics’ influence on French photography is certainly the project commissioned in 1984 by the DATAR (a French governmental delegation dedicated to town and country planning and regional activities). With the objective of representing the French landscape in the 80s, the DATAR first commissioned 12 photographers to travel through France and document its environment. The project grew and it was finally 28 photographers, French and foreign, unknown and famous who created an in depth photographic archive of French landscapes. 

Gabriele Basilico, France, 1984-1985

With images from photographers such as Joseph Koudelka, Lewis Baltz, Gabriele Basilico, Robert Doisneau or Raymond Depardon, this mission is probably the starting point of new European landscape photography. Each photographer expressed his personal engagement with the territory with his own photographic style and explored new aesthetic and emotional dimensions of French landscape photography.

Here is a picture of the initial team. If you’re interested in more portraits of the photographers in 1984, you can find some here: despatin.gobeli.free.fr

The book published in 1989 is now a collectible.

Unfortunately I was unable to recall many images of the project and the ones I found usually have no title, no indication of the location and no author but they offer a good seen of this historical photographic project. 

 

Learn more: 

wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Topographics

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_photographique_de_la_DATAR

Tendance Floue (Blurred Trend/Tendency)

2011 is the 20^th birthday of a French Photographers Collective called Tendance Floue.
Created in 1991 by 5 photographers with the desire to stay independent and keep  control over the content of their work, they are now 14 photographers who have a common vision on Photography in today’s world.
The identity of the Collective is determined both by the personality of each photographer and by the fact that they have projects together. Of course each photographer has his own personality and his own point of view, but since the beginning they also have the strong desire to share their experiences, their stories, their outlooks on the world. As engaged photojournalists concerned by social situations and political subjects, they depict the world through creative, artistic eyes.

They have “the strong belief that interactions between pictures can create a language; that the bringing together of 14 personal ways of perceiving the world and its hazards is the key to defining a more objective outlook. Tendance Floue’s language is to be found in the dialogue between photographs.”

Together, they participate to thematic projects, organize common exhibitions, create a publication named, “Made in” – China (2007), India (2008) and France (2009-10).

The 12 photographers + 2 new recruits

Pascal Aimar

Thierry Ardouin – co-founder

Denis Bourges – co-founder

Gilles Coulon

Olivier Culmann

Bieke Depoorter - new

Mat Jacob – co-founder

Caty Jan – co-founder

Philippe Lopparelli

Bertrand Meunier

Meyer

Flore-Aël Surun

Patrick Tourneboeuf – co-founder
Alain Willaume – new

It’s hard to present the work of 14 artists in 1 article, some here are a few pictures to show the type of work they do. Of course, I’m more sensitive to some photographers than others, but I really like the concept of this Collective, so today’s post is about the Collective as an entity, I’m sure I’ll come back to individuals in the future…

‘This utopia is still alive. And its fragility is more than ever a space of freedom.”

Thierry Ardouin

Philippe Loparelli

Pascal Aimar

Patrick Tourneboeuf

Olivier Culmann

Meyer

Mat Jacob

Gilles Coulon

Denis Bourge

Flore Ael Surun

Bertrand Meunier

Caty Jan

To celebrate their 20^th birthday, the work of all the artists of the group – excluding the 2 new members – is currently presented in 5 Paris galleries, from February 5th to 22th.

Baudoin Lebon : Thierry Ardouin, Flore-Aël Surun et Patrick Tourneboeuf
Galerie Les filles du calvaire : Pascal Aimar et Mat Jacob
La galerie particulière : Gilles Coulon et Philippe Lopparelli
La petite poule noire : Bertrand Meunier
Hôtel de Sauroy : Denis Bourges, Olivier Culmann, Caty Jan et Meyer.