Douarneniste photographer Fanny Penin is exhibiting a series entitled “Les asises” at the La Chambre Claire gallery, starting this Saturday, November 30. She presents her portraits of chairs and armchairs devoid of their primary purpose as a new chapter in her logbook. Photographed in Naples but also in Sicily, these objects became a subject. “I didn’t move them or stage them, never sat in them. I often took a single shot, which would be revealed later during the alchemy of the print. Only the moment could be fulfilled,” she explains. It should be remembered that the photographer works the old-fashioned way with a film camera, and makes her prints herself.
“Naples is a theater in itself”
The intense black and white, sometimes embellished with slight tricks à la Georges Méliès, with engravings on film à la Norman Maclaren, responds to the chaos of the reality of the Neapolitan streets. “Naples is a theater in itself. Everything happens in the street,” says the artist. Mishandled, worn by time, deliberately damaged, the subject becomes a political message. “I see images of women there,” she says. Like this armchair patched up with tights, one of the rare seats in the exhibition where it is undoubtedly still possible to sit.
The photographer, present on the occasion of the opening, this Saturday, November 30 from 6 p.m., will be happy to tell how “in the urgency of becoming a photographer, an image taken several years previously suddenly emerges and provides the keys to the resolution of this emergency.
Practical
“Les Assises” by Fanny Penin. Exhibition from November 30 to January 4. Gallery La Chambre Claire, 3 rue Voltaire in Douarnenez. Tuesday to Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. www.lachambreclairegalerie.fr
