The artist, hosted by the NegPos gallery in Nîmes, spent two years with the people who lived in Saint-Denis before the construction of the Stade de France.
It is a vanished world but also a forgotten moment that Marc Pataut has immortalized with his series “Those on the ground, Le Cornillon”. In the mid-1990s, the photographer documented the life and space that gave way to the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris. Presented as part of Invisible Cities #5 at the Negpos gallery, the exhibition can be discovered with particular pleasure in the open air, at Côté Jardins solidaires.
Marc Pataut's series belongs to the history of contemporary photography. Since its creation, it has been presented at the Documenta in Kassel, at the Jeu de Paume gallery in Paris or at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid… In Nîmes, planted on stems like flowers rocked by the wind, the 134 prints of Marc Pataut bloom like bouquets of wild herbs, between cardoons and leeks, for a unique and particularly successful stroll.
Photos scattered around the garden
In a sober black and white, on small postcard-style formats, Marc Pataut testifies to the two years spent on site with these people in a precarious situation, between the cabins, the vegetation, the wastelands, the rubble, the work that arrive.
The long time allows the artist to form a real bond with the inhabitants. Little by little, in these abandoned landscapes, in the midst of upheaval, he builds the family album of “Ceux du terrain”, a touching, modest, deeply human album.
Over the months and years, the photographer mixes scenes of life, portraits, buildings, the first destruction works, simple everyday gestures, moments of joy, meals, kids playing.
It shows the complicity that the inhabitants maintain with this strange territory, its nature, its fragility, their attachment to the spirit of the place. In this uncertain territory, Marc Pataut always remains in a curious in-between, as if another ending remained possible.
A look at nature in the city
Still as part of the Invisible Cities cycle, NegPos presents the work of the Regards sur la ville research group, which for the second year is interested in the place of nature and more particularly in the trees and grasses that intrude into the urban environments.
Chantal Auriol photographs trees trapped in concrete. Jocelyn Banabera plays with reflections and shadows to create fresh effects. With very different styles, Laurence Charrié and Gwenaëlle Bourriaud examine the plants that intrude between the concrete, stones and tar. Christian Coite follows them as they climb along the gutters. Marcelle Boyer poetically documents the nature around the Assomption stadium, a space destined to disappear. Frédéric Deschamps is particularly interested in two varieties and two local colors, with the hackberry tree and the Judas tree. Finally Fabrice Jurquet immortalizes the ephemeral in the alleys of the Protestant cemetery.
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