Paris Photo will welcome thousands of photographs, all styles and genres, to the Grand Palais in Paris from November 7 to 10, with more than 200 exhibitors including 147 galleries. As with each edition, and this year will be the 27th, the photographic book takes an important part in the galleries and sections. Here are three works to discover on this occasion.
1 “Women photographers are dangerous” by Laure Adler
There are 69 women photographers that Laure Adler presents and recounts in this book. And as a history lesson, in her introduction, she quotes Louis Daguerre, one of the precursors of photography. The year is 1838. He declares: “Although the result is obtained using chemical means, this little work could perhaps please the ladies a lot.” Laure Adler continues : “the problem is that, to the great dismay of some of these gentlemen (…) women have never played around with photography, they have taken it seriously from the beginning.”
In Women photographers are dangerous, we come across Agnès Varda, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti and Sarah Moon, among the famous ones. But we can also discover Letizia Battaglia, who since the 70s, courageously documented the murders of the mafia, she “portraitized” the widows of this war and bore witness to the suffering in images, even displaying her photos in the streets of the stronghold Corleone mafioso. “Courageous”, your Laure Adler.
Another example, Ouka Leele, which claims the blurring of genres. The Spanish artist is to photography what Pedro Almodovar is to cinema. With her photographs enhanced by watercolor, she creates a gallery of garish, saturated and kitsch which tells the story of Spain after Franco.
Women photographed by Helen Levitt in the 80s, Laure Adler writes : “In the dilapidated streets, squatting or hopping, their graceful silhouettes sketch an improvised dance.”
In 69 portraits, a beautiful team of women artists emerges, not completely invisible but whom Laure Adler presents as fighters.
“Women photographers are dangerous”, Laure Adler and Clara Bouveresse published by Flammarion, 158 pages 29.90 euros.
2“Looks. A century of photography, from Brassaï to Martin Parr. Masterpieces of the Fnac collection”
The title is long and the work weighs its weight. But it is a real encyclopedia of photography. Fnac has a large collection of photos. 1775 works by 525 photographers. They are almost all there, from this 20th century, which was that of the maturity of photography. From Brassaï to Martin Parr via Koudelka, Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud, Tina Modotti, Berenice Abbott, Gisèle Freund, Raymond Depardon, Robert Doisneau, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Robert Capa. Documentaries in black and white or color, imagery that tells the story of the turbulent world of the last century.
Quentin Bajac, director of the Jeu de Paume and curator of this work, defines the collection as follows: “It brings together photographs by authors who would define themselves, spontaneously, as photographers and not as artists: a collection of 'photographs by photographers' which is located in the domain of the 'instantaneous' and not the 'conceptual'. .
The photographs are accompanied by writing. Writers chose an image and took inspiration from it for a short text that could be a short story. Yasmina Reza says of Jerry Berndt's 1974 photograph of a dancing couple: “I can feel the thick fabric of the dress, probably the slight relief”. Monica Sabolo imagines thoughts of Henry Clarke's so-perfect elegant in 1956, “She’s alone, she’s waiting…”. Yannick Haenel walks through the Tuscan landscapes of Gianni Berengo Gardin, Carole Martinez follows the dance of looks and bodies of Janine Niépce. Also to be seen at Paris Photo.
“Regards. A century of photography, from Brassaï to Martin Parr. Masterpieces of the Fnac collection”, under the direction of Quentin Bajac, Gallimard editions. 45 euros, 304 pages, 250 illustrations.
3 An autofiction in images: “Room 207” by Jean-Michel André
For photographers and novelists alike, there is a genre: autofiction. Hervé Guibert was one of its magnificent authors. We can also cite the visual artist Christian Boltanski or Sophie Calle, surely the most mysterious one playing with the codes of the genre. Jean-Michel André, photographer based in Barcelona, at the crossroads of documentary and visual arts, with Room 207, tells us his story, a tragic story.
That summer, Jean-Michel André, as a child, went on vacation with his father, his new partner and his daughter. On August 5, 1983, they stopped at the Sofitel in Avignon. Jean-Michel André's father is murdered with six other people. This will become the business of Sofitel. The crime will make headlines in the press that summer. It will never be completely elucidated. 40 years later, Jean-Michel André composes a story between journalistic investigation, family novel and work of reconstruction, as Clement Cheroux writes in a text which accompanies this interior journey in images. “Why here and on this day did his father die? The mystery remains. Was his father targeted?”
The book brings together photographs from the AFP at the time of the events, contact sheets and facsimile newspapers. Thus the investigation takes on an 80s tone. To these sepia images of the past, Jean-Michel André adds his own childhood photos and those he took when returning to the scene of the crime.
He travels around and his photos move from documentary to poetry, telling the story of the child who lost his father and will never really know why. Next to a set of keys from the period, a landscape of today's Camargue reveal this quest for truth. And the photographer writes: “Today, I return to the hotel, transform the torment and reinvent the end of the story.” The images from this work are currently on display at the Hospice Comtesse Museum in Lille until February 2.
“Room 207” by Jean-Michel André, Actes Sud, 152 pages 39 euros
Paris Photo at the Grand Palais in Paris from November 7 to 10.
