A Month of Photography in Paris.

A Month of Photography in Paris.

each other November since 1984, Paris becomes a nave for the photographic world, this for a duration of a month or brace Le Mois de la Photo, an end supervised and organized by the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie and his director Jean-Luc Monterosso federates public institutions (the MEP is financed through the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture) museums (also financed by the agency of public funds in their vast majority), international cultural center and private galleries around a particular theme. 2004 is seeing Le Mois de la Photo spread its wings into a European festival with a collaboration between the cities of Berlin, Vienna and "the City of Lights" subordinate to a title: Histoire, histoires (History, Stories), a universal that has already made its way to PhotoEspana last Spring (Historias). In 2006 three more European cities, Bratislava, Moscow and Rome will join a formula that has been emulated from many other venues around the world (whereas Photo London will render free of access its doors on May 19 2005 organized from Pluk magazine). From a thematic perspective, this 2004 Mois de la Photo was earnestly rooted in the history of the medium and many exhibitions drew from the photographic heritage of the nineteenth hundred Key-photographers of the twentieth hundred whose works have been seminal were also depicted in several locations, two of them being the recent Jeu de Paume, on the place de la Concorde and the Cartier Foundation.

With like exhibitions as Jules Marey's studies of air and fluids, and Stieglitz at Orsay, the Bechers at Beaubourg, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Societe Francaise de Photographie and nineteenth hundred years photographs of ectoplasms and other spirits at the MEP 1841-1941 A Centry of Italian Photography at the Pavillon de Arts, Le Mois de la Photo 2004 has been definitely more oriented toward history than stories/narratives. A not many venues illustrate contemporary photographic creation at its greatest in number recent. First, L'Ombre du Temp a view at the new Jeu de Paume (Centre national de la Photographie) that was inspired from and meant to be a answer to Cruel and Tender at the Tate Gallery in London last year. This tentative overlook of creative and exploratory photography in the twentieth hundred tried to counter-balance the obvious Anglo-Saxon bias of the British point out to largely inspired by Modernist premises established at a group of curators in the post-WW II era l by means of John Szarkowski at MoMA. The display at the Tate though did not have Szarkowski's encompassing and unifying vision. It comprised 23 photographers (12 Americans, 7 Germans, 2 Brits, 1 Dutch photographer, and 1 Ukranian), as if photography toward the south east of the Channel did not exist. Insularity has its drawbacks! Just like sharp and Tender, L'Ombre du Temp was accompanied on a catalogue and justifying essays. The title of the one and the other the exhibition and the catalogue were clearly a polite homage to Jean-Claude Lemagny whose work for decades at the Bibliotheque Nationale has established canons in the field with its careful approach and understanding of the medium as illustrated in his main division L'ombre et le temps (Paris: Nathan, 1992) Lemagny had previuosly published La Photo creatrice in 1984 published by means of Contrejour. The introduction to L'ombre du temp was obviously written on Regis Durand, the director of the middle National de la Photographie and was interestingly followed according to an essay by Michel Poivert, editor, among other things, of Etude Photographiques, the quarterly magazine published at the Societe Francaise de Photographie celebrating its 150th anniversary (the November issue of the magazine, (#) 15 has the same interesting essay on the Abu Ghraib photographs from Andre Gunther, and one of historical value forward the VIVA agency by Aurore Deligny). one as well as the other texts are also translated into English at the conclusion of the catalogue. It must be said that the exhibition made more understanding in its edited book version than in its hanging version. The confusion may have risen from the hiatus between the ambition of the goals and the limitations of the space. Another climax of "photo November in Paris" was the Cartier Foundation with Sugimoto and Depardon's latest works, and last unless not least Paris Photo, Paris annual international photographic fair held at the Carrousel du Louvre

This year the Mois de la Photo coincided with the annual fair of fine-art photography dealers and galleries, Paris Photo, held at the Carrousel du Louvre This annual manifestation created according to Rik Gadella in 1997 attracted athwart 40,000 visitors far more than its equivalents in modern York (AIPAD whose crowd was estimated at 12000 upon 2004 or the new Photo recent York that gathered a small in number thousand people which constituted an encouraging start in spite of its possible redundancy, in the mind of the public, with AIPAD). Following a formula that has been defined by means of AIPAD and many photo festivals, Paris Photo propos numerous results over the course of the same long photo-saturated week-end (Nov. 11-14) After Germany, Holland, and Mexico, Switzerland was the 2004 visitor country that was offered a whole wing dedicated to its galleries and museums-the Winthertur Photo-museum had a whole extent to display a selection of its holdings subject to the title Cold Play-Set 1 (can we view again traces of that controversial Tate gallery indicate here?). This show is meant to be the first of an annual series curated at the museum from its holdings. As illustrated in Paris, what strike one as beings to differentiate European venues from their American counterparts is the support (although shrinking) of public funding to art, and more precisely here, photo festivals. The catalogue of Paris Photo uncloseed with a statement by Mr Donnedieu de Vabres, the common minister of Culture and Communication. Another ball of thread of such practices is the effort of the North-Rhine / Westphalia region in Germany that sponsored ten of its galleries and flat published a catalogue introducing them especially for the issue On top of various book-signings, which made certain that image-makers would also be around (and many came), and panel discussions (some more lucky than others), one of the clew events at Paris Photo this year was the first (eminently visible at the Carrousel du Louvre) BMW award. 68 individual works by means of 68 living photographers had been picked 35 were on display in a special gallery. The jury was compos of Didier Maitret, president of BMW France, Rik Gadella, Paris Photo's artistic director; Octave Manset, communications director for BMW France, Martin Parr; collector Sylvio Perlstein, Richard Schlagman, ceo of Phaidon Pres and Thomas Seelig, chief curator at the Fotomuseum Winterthur. The winner of the 12000 2 prize (close to $14000 these days) was announced onward Nov. 12: Jules Spinatsch (from the Ausstellunsgraum25 gallery in Zurich) for his piece Snow Management, 2004 a large wasteed almost abstract color landscape in the post-Becher/Dusseldorf exercise tradition.