Roger-Viollet is this magical gallery on rue de Seine where millions of historical negatives owned by the City of Paris are stocked and sold. Recently taken over by photo lover Gilles Taquet, it has become more dynamic and organizes regular exhibitions of their archives. At the time when Centre Pompidou is doing a retrospective of photo reporter Gaston Paris (1903-1964), … Read More
From Dharamsala, with love
Some of you might be aware that the 14 th Dalai Lama, Tenzyn Gyato (b.1935) has left Tibet in 1959 with 100 000 Tibetans and settled in Dharamsala in order to keep its religious freedom. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Nicholas Vreeland who was raised in New York, and worked there with both Irving Penn and Richard … Read More
Photographer Samuel Fosso is impressive at MEP
Suddenly African artists and writers are hip in Paris and at the time when the Goncourt Prize is being awarded to “La Plus secrète Mémoire des Hommes” by the Dakar born, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, I enjoyed Samuel Fosso‘s exhibition at MEP, Musée Européenne de la photographie, run since 2019 by the Scot Simon Baker. The very talented photographer was born … Read More
Roger Fenton reports from Crimea, in Chantilly
It is quite amazing to think that there were already photo reporters in 1855, fifteen years after the invention of photography in 1839, and this is what the precious Roger Fenton exhibition at Château de Chantilly is teaching us. Fenton (1819-1869) was born in Lancashire and started out as a painter in Paris in Paul Delaroche‘s atelier. He soon became … Read More
Maria Lannino brings our dear Palermo to Paris.
This week Paris Photo took over the Grand Palais Ephémère with 148 galleries from 25 countries, and it was fun to hear again all sorts of languages being spoken with a large group of German galleries from Berlin, new ones from South Africa and Morocco, and the usual New Yorkers. But for us, long time fanatics of the fair, there … Read More
Annie Leibovitz is disconcerting at Académie des Beaux Arts
She is such a legend in the world of photography that I was surprised to actually see and even talk to Annie Leibovitz at the presentation of her exhibition at Pavillon Comtesse de Caen. The 72 year old photographer, an admirer of Henri Cartier- Bresson an Robert Frank, who started working for Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 while she was … Read More
Paris bridges glow at night, thanks to Gary Zuercher
Gary Zuercher moved to Paris for the only good reason there is: he fell in love with a French woman, Dominique, whom he met on a flight from Cancun to Mexico City. The book on the thirty five Parisian bridges on the Seine, “The Glow of Paris”, which he photographed at night over a period of five years, is the … Read More
News of the week
The happiest news of the week is the nomination of Christophe Leribault, 57, as President of Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, two museums with the largest Impressionist collection in the world, which are often number one on the to-see-list of foreign visitors. He has done marvels at Musée du Petit Palais for 9 years and will inaugurate a Jean-Michel Othoniel … Read More