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Mois de la Photo Paris 2012

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Also this year we joined Aalst’s “Academy for Imaging Arts” for a weekend of indulgement in the photo exhibitions on show during “Mois de la Photo Paris 2012” – still having good memories of the beautiful images on display in 2010 we left with high hopes on a cold Friday night from Belgium. In the morning we were greeted with the familair sight of an Eiffel tower hiding in fog:

Eiffel tower in fog

Eiffel tower in fog

As tradition wants (it seems, we also started here in 2010), first exhibition of the day visited was at the “Bibliothèque nationale de France” hosting “100 Masterpieces of Photography”. It’s poster was straightaway my favorite picture:

100 Masterpieces of Photography

From there on we moved towards the “Ēcole nationale Supérieure d’architecture” where i found my favorite images of the whole weekend: the large format images of modern cities contrasting with their older remains, by Peter Bialobrzeski. I knew the work of this photographer already longer time (also went to a lecture by him at the photomuseum in Antwerp), and here in Paris my admiration for the works by this photographer only became stronger:

Peter Bialobrzeski

At the same location, black & white images by Gerard Rondeau were on show, below some impressions:

Gerard Rondeau

From here onwards, we travelled back to the 3eme arrondissement and made a brief stop at Galerie Baudoin Lebon showing images of Chrystèle Lerisse and Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand:

Chrystele Lerisse

After this we moved to Hôtel de Sauroy, showing an exhibition called “Thanks to Luigi Ghirri and Italian Emerging Photography”. Nice image from Marco Barbon:

Marco Barbon

Final visit of the day was to Galerie les Filles du Calvaire showing “Corinne Mercadier, devant un champ obscur”:

Corinne Mercadier

This concluded our first day of exhibition visits in Paris, quite tired from all the walking the next challenge in Paris was waiting us: finding a decent, reasonably priced restaurant at this time of the evening (moreover Saturday). This took us quite a while, until we found a Thai (our favorite food)/ Chinese restaurant. We should have known better of course, the Chinese don’t have a clue how to cook Thai, other then putting some chili in an otherwise normal Chinese dish… Anyway we were so hungry that it didn’t really matter what they served us, we ate it anyway 😉
After a good night’s rest and nice breakfast at the hotel, day 2 of our “tour of Paris” could start, commencing with a visit to Maison européene de la Photographie. Nice images seen here:

Also a Helmut Newton (another one of my favourite photographers),

Helmut Newton

an amazing shot by Jean-Paul Goude of Grace Jones:

Grace Jones by Jean-Paul Goude

and beautiful black&white photograph by Bettina Rheims:

Bettina Rheims

Next visit planned was to the Centre culturel suisse, where I found this image by Annelies Ŝtrba very nice:

Annelie Strba

Further some images by Richard Avedon, Nobuyoshi Araki and Nan Goldin (this last one not really my taste, therefore no images, sorry) were on show:

Richard Avedon

From this exhibition we moved on to the Galerie des bibliotheques, where the exhibition “L’ Enfant & la Photographie” was showing. Here i didn’t find too many images nice to my taste, therefore no favourites here ;-). Since it was already getting late, we split up here from the rest of the group since the majority was returning by bus the same evening. We (my wife and I) treated ourselves to an additional night in Paris, and therefore could still visit the Jeu de Paume where images by Manuel Alvarez Bravo where on show: also very nice black & white photographs by this Mexican artist:

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

So, that was it – quite a long post about our adventures in Paris… Generally, I found this edition of Mois de la Photo a bit weaker then the 2010 version: this year there were much more “conceptual art” photographs, which sometimes (euh most of the times) I fail to understand hence do not really like, while during the 2010 edition more of the old masters were on show – for instance, I still vividly remember the amazing shots by André Kertész that I saw… I dont think this will be the case for this edition. But hey, every excuse is good to pay a visit to the City of Light! To finalize this long post (to make up for the long silence on this blog ;-)), some general views of Paris:

And a parting shot of our group:

Paris – Mois de la Photo (Day 2)

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The following day after a (too) short night’s sleep we had quick breakfast (as an evening person coffee is more then enough for me to get me comfortable in the morning (or in other words: to get the grumpiness going haha) and then checked-out from our (for Paris standards: nice) hotel ,

Lobby Paris Hotel

and placed the luggage in the minibus before embarking on our ongoing museum stampede… For the ones wondering, we travelled Paris by metro:

Paris Metro

First in row today was “Musée national de la Marine” where some pictures from Rineke Dijkstra were exhibited (Dijkstra’s pictures are (for me) immediately recognizable: teens on the brink of becoming adults, and not sure knowing where they belong – they are clearly feeling awkward when photographed, and this recognizable feeling is what makes these pictures so fantastic):

Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra

When leaving the museum had to take the obligatory picture from Eiffel tower:

Eiffel Tower, Paris

and went on to the next exhibition in “Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris” where the idea was to visit the “scandalous” exhibition of Larry Clark – but hey, the fact it was so scandalous made for waiting rows until the next block. So we skipped this one, and instead went to the (probable evenly) shocking Gaza pictures showing the results of a war-torn country by Kai Wiedenhöfer: mutilated people, destroyed buildings,… quite confronting to watch (not my favourite of the day to be honest, I still like to think we are living in an ideal world – clearly not). Whilst the rest of the group opted to take lunch, a fellow student and me decided to make use of this idle (hehe) time to quickly visit the exhibition of André Kertész, which became quickly my overall favourite of the Paris exhibitions: his very graphical black and whites (“Dancer”, “Distortions”, “The Fork”, “Underwater”, “Chimneys” but even his color SX-70 polaroids) are for me the result of sheer photography genius. Happy not to have missed this one (rest of the group seemed not to have enjoyed themselves: so-so soup, arrogant waiter and expensive – while we had a massive pita for 5Euros only hahaha – sorry guys). After having joined up again together we found the “Maison Européenne de la Photographie”, another highlight for me with pictures from Raymond Depardon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bettina Reims, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon – so many great names, and what a collection of fantastic photographs – below one of my favorites (i forgot to note the photographer’s name, though – sorry):

Maison Europeene de la Photographie, Paris

There was as well a fantastic print by black and white master Ansel Adams, “Moonrise” – I stood in awe, not only for the photography technique, but as well for the printing quality:

Moonrise by Ansel Adams

In conclusion of this visit we had a stop-over for drinks in (another friendly hmm hmm) Paris bar, before embarking on a visit to the “Institut Suédois” – also here magnificent black and white pictures, I let them speak for themselves:

Institut Suedois

 

Institut Suedois

 

And finally, we concluded our visit to “Mois de la Photo Paris 2010” by entering the “Photos femmes féminisme” in the “Bibliothèque Marguerite-Durand”, an exhibition concentrating on the women who have been on the forefront of the feminism. Nice “classic” pics here, e.g. the Mata Hari one here below:

Mata Hari at the “Photos Femmes Feminisme”

We left this final exhibition tired, with sore feet, but contented having been submerged in such incredibly talented photography – in 2 years time we will be back!