I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Paris with my mum at the end of last week - and it turned out to be the last few days of the Mois de la Photo, so there were photography exhibitions everywhere I turned. Talk about being as happy as a pig in the veritable!
On the first evening we stopped by a gallery near our hotel, called the Gallery W (
http://www.galeriew.com). It looked very small from the outside, but turned out to be a vast space inside, on several levels. There were two main exhibitions. The first was called Paris Sauvage, and consisted of stuffed animals photographed at night in front of Paris landmarks. Yes, really. Stuffed polar bears, tigers, alligators – you get the picture. At first it was quite entertaining, but when faced with a wall of prints showing the same dead polar bear in front of every Paris tourist attraction you can think of, I just wanted to grab the photographer by the shoulders, shake him, and say, “I get it. Really, I do. Now enough!”
The second exhibition in this gallery consisted of portraits of American bikers. Again, it was a bit of a case of if you’d seen one you’d seen them all. They were all (with one or two notable exceptions) studio portraits shot on 5x4in, printed showing the mucky borders and blown up very large indeed.
So not the best start. But then things got a whole lot better. Just a bit further up the road, down a little side alley, was a gallery called Le Bal (
http://www.le-bal.fr). At the time, I wasn’t sure whether it was a general art gallery, but it turns out it’s dedicated to photography and seems to be the brainchild of Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon. Not only was it a superb space, but the exhibition, called Anonymes, is one of the best I’ve seen in many years. We were lucky enough to arrive just as the curator was beginning a tour of the exhibition in English. It turned out at the end that we’d piggy-backed on a talk for photographic researchers and historians, but nobody seemed to mind!
The theme of the exhibition was about people and places across America that, for whatever reason, are anonymous or have been portrayed as such. We were treated to a wall of 71 vintage Lewis Baltz prints (all from the same collection, which is apparently very rare), as well as work by Walker Evans, Bruce Gilden and Jeff Wall – plus several other names I was unfamiliar with. The highlight, for me, was a series of work by a photographer who I’d never heard of, whose name is Anthony Hernandez (
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=30592). He worked with a 5x7in view camera in a very poor area of Los Angeles, where he grew up. He photographed the people who, in many ways, kept the city going, but who couldn’t afford even the cheapest car and therefore were forced to use the public transport system – so many of the images portray people waiting at bus stops looking blank and disenfranchised. It was the kind of work you instantly connect with, and there was so much to read into the images I could have studied them all evening.
I could bang on about loads more in this exhibition, but it would get boring. If anyone happens to be in Paris over the next couple of weeks, it’s on until 19th December. I wish I could have gone back for another look.
The next day, we had planned to go to an exhibition of Harry Callahan photographs at the Cartier-Bresson Foundation, but unfortunately my mum had her mobile stolen so by the time we’d found a shop and sorted it all out we couldn’t get to the gallery. Bugger. However, the humungous Andre Kertesz exhibition the next day more than made up for it (
http://www.jeudepaume.org/index.php?idArt=1187&lieu=1&page=article). I was absolutely blown away. It has to be the most comprehensive exhibition of his work that’s ever been staged. Everything was on display, from teeny tiny contact prints of his early work, to the Distortions series, to the fork on the plate (including the original negative), Mondrian’s house, broken plate, Meudon… You name it, it was there. It was beautifully put together, and a superb reminder of what an extraordinary photographer he was. It's on until 6th February next year, so book yourselves on the Eurostar and get over there - it's well worth a special trip.
So that was that. I’d have loved a bit more time to see a few more exhibitions, and to revisit the ones that we did get to (apart from the stuffed beasts – I’ve had enough of those to last a while), but the whole experience also made me wonder why it is that London just can’t get it together to host a similar sort of event. Not only that, but why on earth isn’t London peppered with fantastic venues such as Le Bal – which wasn’t only a brilliant space, but also had the most amazing restaurant (a slight improvement on the lukewarm cuppa and dry flapjack of a certain London venue I could mention…). It makes me realise how far we have still to come in this country in terms of how photography is perceived. Hey ho – but at least I’m lucky enough to live only a short hop to Paris. Perhaps we should do a Filmwasters trip there for next year’s Mois de la Photo…
(By the way, for various reasons I actually forgot to pack a camera to take with me, and despite Ed and Leon’s sterling efforts to get one to me before I left, I ended up taking a Boots’ own-brand disposable. I only shot a few frames, but decided that a few days spent looking at pictures was every bit as enjoyable as a few days spent taking them.)
