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Five new exhibitions at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie

Image: Maison Européenne de la Photographie.

Text: Rooksana Hossenally.

The Maison Européene de la Photographie (MEP) is one of those key venues that is internationally renowned for showing work by high-profile photographers. And this week was no exception with the launch of five brand new exhibitions. If you’re going to be in the area it’s worth popping in to see William Ropp’s stunning portraits. But the other works on show, including Götz Göppert’s panoramic night shots of Paris, Dominique Isserman’s Laetitia Casta, Youssef Nabil’s Egyptian mise-en-scènes and the series, Eloges du vertige, might leave you feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

The four floors are divided up between the five photographers’ work. From top to bottom: Eloges du vertige and Youssef Nabil, followed by Isserman and the second part of Eloges du vertige on the next floor, then Ropp on first and Götz Göppert in the basement.

Atelier Boba : Photo Prints ´sur mesure´

Image: Ryan Boatright in Atelier Boba

Text: Philip Tonda

The new Paris-based photo studio Atelier Boba does not only offer printing and technical advice on a high, professional level; they are also, unlike most printing places, very competent in giving artistic advise on your art project and photo work.

Owner Ryan Boatright, an artist himself, has long worked intensely with photography in various ways. When moving to Paris two years ago, he knew exactly how to proceed. He and his wife the conservator Caroline Barcella, found an old shop in Montmartre, renovated it, and gave birth to Atelier Boba. Since it's conception in 2010 they've put all their effort into making this a well-functioning, professional printing studio, working closely with artists, photographers and other people interested in photography. 

Who comes to Atelier Boba? 
It varies. We have recently worked on print projects for a contemporary artist, commercial photographer, and a documentary photographer. We've also had people coming to receive feedback and critique on their photo work, and some just come to talk about art over a coffee. Furthermore we're currently engaged in a scanning project for an individual who has a large collection of glass plate negatives that he wants digitized so he can share the images with his family on the Internet.

Get Comfy in the Maison of Photography

Image: Edu Simões

Text: Kristen Cammack

When you need to get out of the bitter cold this winter, I suggest getting cozy in the Maison Européenne de la photographie.

Open late until 8pm Wednesday though Sunday, it’s a great Museum to visit before grabbing drinks with friends. You can impress them by chatting about the current exhibitions covering subjects from the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomblé to early photography in Albania.

The MEP has always had a penchant for Brazilian photographers, and it continues to take visitors deeper into the culture. In 1951, José Medeiros offended the believers of Candomblé by dissecting into their sacred secrets and exposing their unique rituals. Edu Simões shows how a simple lunchbox can define the very person you are.

And right after admiring delicious warm meals of construction workers, Fernanda Magalhães sends you on an adventure for the ideal body of a woman. Using nude photos of obese women, their boobs, their legs, their fesses. 

VINGT Paris Presents Artist in Residency

   

 Image: Towards Architect, Hannu Karjalainen

We're very happy to announce that Hannu Karjalainen (Helsinki, Finland) will be the first artist in residency within the Paname Fibres project by VINGT Paris.

Working mainly with video and photography, his "artist studio" is his sketchbook itself, which he brings with him wherever he goes. 

Camera Obscura: nofound_photofair

Text: Natalie Turturro

Image: Vincent Delbrouck

I kind of beelined straight into the nofound photofair—glasses halfway down my nose, I saw a blurry pile of empty beer cans in Galerie Bertrand Grimont. My hazy vision misled me: these were no ordinary beer cans. (Good thing I resisted the urge to kick it.) They were photos of Kronenbourg cans stapled together by Cyril Hatt to imitate real ’bourgs crumpled under the hands of the Hulk and tossed away as trash in the corner.

I pushed my glasses up my nose, but they slid down again.  With 43 booths to cover, I set my compass to navigate around the bushy masturbation photos on the downstairs level and made my way up the ramp to the second floor.  After all, this is Garage Turenne—no stairs!

Women Who Changed India at the Petit Palais

Image: Petit Palais.

Text: Rooksana Hossenally.

The much-awaited exhibition showing some of India’s most high-profile women has reached its final stop in Paris after touring India, Milan, London and Brussels. The collaboration between Reporters sans Frontières and the BNP (Banque Nationale de Paris), the photography agency, Magnum Photos, and the Delhi-based publishers, Zubaan, is a celebration of BNP’s 150-year presence in India.

The exhibition is the second Reporters Sans Frontières project at the Petit Palais after 'Pierre et Alexandra Boulat' last year. Following the success of ‘Paris-Bombay’ at the Centre Pompidou earlier on this year, ‘Women Who Changed India’ is proving to be equally as successful with queues stretching for a mile or so outside the venue. Everyone is rushing to see the six photographers’ works showing how women have become more active in the changing face of India, a country where women have always been, to borrow Simone de Beauvoir’s terminology, the ‘second sex’.

Magnum photographers, Martine Franck, Alex Webb, Patrick Zachmann, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Olivia Arthur and Raghu Rai, seek to underline the cultural and geographic diversity of women in India by showing women in their evolving roles; be it as taxi drivers, lawyers, politicians or film directors. Needless to say that the colourful prints hanging in the Petit Palais’ basement gallery are pleasing to the eye, but one must wonder what this exhibition really means in terms of equality of the sexes: is it necessary to underline the difference between genders in order to encourage equality?

Cutlog Paris 2011 Odyssey

Image: Cutlog 

Text: Natalie Turturro

Under the classical rooftop of the Bourse de Commerce, contemporary artists (and the promoters of their insanities) have gathered to share the ideas they’ve built in disparate lands.  Reppin’ at Cutlog 2011 are cities such as Tokyo, Hamburg, Shanghai, Berlin, Namur, New York, London, Bregen, Vienna,
Antwerp, Switzerland, Frankfurt, Milan, Providence, and of course - Paris
herself.

Taking my coat off, I ran into an acquaintance who acquainted *me* with two 
Russian sisters.  One demanded the brand of my mascara while the other 
insisted I visit Galerie Alb. Upon arriving to Alb’s charted cube, I was
greeted - nay, assaulted - with pink neon scribble divulging some sort of sexual
obscenity about “the last dick” the artist sucked. The gallery owner was 
watching me with a wry smile on her face.  The Russians waited with wide
 eyes, anticipating such blatant art would insinuate an equally undisguised
 reaction.

*Well, ladies*…this ain’t the first time I’ve been to the contemporary art
rodeo.

Paris is not black and white..It’s grey!

A conversation between Susie Hollands, Director of Vingt Paris and Philip Tonda, artist and curator.

Image: Kristijan Radakovic

Philip: When did you first get the idea of creating an artist-in-residence program?

Susie: I got the idea when I came to Paris in 2003 or 2004 to pursuit my own artistic ambitions. I met a lot of people and everybody seemed to have something in common - they came because Paris is a good place for creative souls. However, it's really hard to find a place to live and work here!

At this time I was also starting an art gallery with some friends. While this was not necessarily a sustainable undertaking, it did give some insight to the Parisian art scene and the situation for artists: Rents are sky high and there are very few spaces available. But artists need space to work.

Then we developed a community of people who nevertheless lived here, artists, photographers, writers etc. And this community has grown to what Vingt Paris Magazine is today. The idea of a residency project is really an extension of this.

Magnum Gallery and Nintendo Team Up: A New Era in Photography?

Image: Magnum Gallery

Text: Rooksana Hossenally

One of the world’s most prestigious photography galleries, Magnum Gallery in Paris, has partnered up with globalisation king, Nintendo, for an exhibition of (to promote) 3D photography (the brand new Nintendo 3DS).  The exhibition includes 3D images taken with the Nintendo 3DS by three Magnum photographers: Martin Parr, Thomas Dworzak and Gueorgui Pinkhassov.

The exhibition has transformed the white walls of the Magnum Gallery into an upmarket video games console store. Several portable games consoles sit on flashy plastic Nintendo-branded pedestals. Peer closely at each console and you’ll see a slideshow of a few eerie 3D images of each photographer’s ‘perception’ of everyday life. ('Perception' because it could be too strong a word to use to describe the result.) The lack of a guiding artistic thread puts the spotlight on the tool rather than the work. The images are nothing to write home about and disappointingly so, especially from Magnum Photos’ best.

However, what this exhibition does draw attention to, is the questionable future of photography as we know it today – in two dimensions. We have seen the three-dimensional motion picture cut itself a generous part of the blockbuster pie with the success of Avatar and its various followers, so why wouldn’t photography also tumble into an era of what many like to call ‘progress’? Could this be the start of 3D photography?

Claude Cahun At The Jeu De Paume

Image: Autoportrait, 1939, Jersey Heritage Collection
Text: Susie Kahlich

“I was right: art, life: it amounts to the same thing. It belongs to the one who goes the farthest in the dream - or in the nightmare.” Heroines, by Claude Cahun.

It is generally accepted nowadays that the Surrealists were pretty much a boys-only club. Girls were allowed primarily only as muses, the female body depicted as dangerous and ideal. Claude Cahun, a photographer, collagist and writer,  existed only as a minor player on the fringe of the movement until the mid-1980s, when Cahun's work was rediscovered and widely celebrated.

Cahun’s photographs were on a par with Man Ray, and made collages equal to Max Ernst. Unlike Man Ray, Ernst and even Breton, Cahun’s work investigates the female body as a jumping off point to ask larger questions about gender, identity and societal definitions of self.