While the whole of literary London gathered around charming historian Philip Mansel at the French Institute for his talk on his remarkable new biography of Louis XIV, “King of the World”, and art collectors and dealers (like Alexis Kugel) were at Christie’s bidding for the Rothschild treasures with its exceptional Flemish cabinets, polychrome enamel plaques by Léonard Limosin and rock crystal … Read More
Sally Mann, from Washington to Salem and Jeu de Paume in Paris
Sally Mann is a fascinating photographer. Born in Lexington, Virginia, she has photographed her family when her three children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia were young, with an old large format camera and collodion type wet plates. After concentrating on their holidays, she developed a corpus of pictures on Baptist churches near Lexington, the American South with its great swamps and … Read More
Rachel Cobb, a sensitive photographer who celebrates the Mistral
American photographer Rachel Cobb won the Picture of the Year award for her coverage of 9/11, she worked in Sarajevo and with the homeless in New York. But the topic of her first exhibition in Paris is more poetic and results from twenty years of watching a specific wind, the Mistral in Provence, which became a book published by Damiani. … Read More
Wright Morris photographs little everyday things
Unlike his fiction which often focuses on flamboyant characters, Wright Morris‘ photographs are practically devoid of figures. Born in 1910 in Nebraska, this complete artist has developed, all his life, an experimental dialogue between images and text. His black and white pictures at Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson are breathtaking in their simplicity and sternness. A good occasion to discover their … Read More
Tomas van Houtryve revisits USA’s old frontiers
Tomas von Houtryve has a Belgian name but was born in California. He has spent his (so far short) life documenting his on-field photographies like the series he did on 21st century Communist countries called “Behind the curtain”. His present exhibition at galerie Baudoin Lebon in Paris is devoted to “Lines and lineage”, on the Mexican population spoiled of their … Read More
Jean Larivière is back, with all his magic
You probably still remember the magical pictures which served as advertising for Louis Vuitton in the 1980’s. Henry Racamier, the President, and Jean Francois Bentz, head of RSCG agency asked Jean Larivière to create the LV image through a series called “l’Ame du voyage” (the soul of voyage). For twenty years, his photos transported us to Tibet and Kashmir, Groenland, … Read More
At Jeu de Paume, Florence Lazar films everyday life in conflict zones
Two exhibitions have opened at Jeu de Paume while a new director, Quentin Bajac, is taking office. He recently came back from MoMA in New York, where he ran the photography department after having worked at Musée d’Orsay. The first retrospective of Luigi Ghirri‘s (1943-1992) outside Italy deals with the 1970’s and brings a colorful and modern vision of a former … Read More
Peter Lindbergh converses with Giacometti
German photographer Peter Lindbergh (born 1944) is well known for discovering new models such as Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington in the 1980’s, who would become the greatest in the world for a few decades. He changed the conception we had of them as clothes bearers to super stars. His black and white fashion photographs are unique and working with him … Read More