A major photographic exhibition is coming to the North. Representing the first half of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s career (which spans from 1932 to 1946), a photographic material which was carefully selected, printed and mounted to a scrapbook by himself after the World War II, will be shown in the National Media Museum in Bradford from 7th of March to 1st of June 2008.
As the museum’s website reports, “these photographs documented both his extensive travels andbresson_mexico1934.jpg his encounters with Surrealism and modern art. They were conceived as an initial selection for a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a show that would catapult Cartier-Bresson onto the world stage and bring him international recognition. All the original photographs have now been brought together for a new exhibition, showing for the first time in the UK.” (photo left: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mexico, 1934)
The story about the scrapbook’s making entails few very interesting twists. During World War II, and following Cartier-Bresson’s capture by the Nazis, the curators of the Museum of Modern Art were making arrangements for a posthumous exhibition of his work. But Henri, after three years in prison camps and two unsuccessful attempts, he managed to escape in 1943 and then survived in hiding. Few years later, he found out with pleasure about the MoMA plans and decided to collaborate and curate the exhibition himself, bringing 300 self-made prints glued in a scrapbook to New York!
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Leeds under construction. The city deconstructed.
Photograph by Christos Stavrou © 2007. All rights reserved
I opened a classic book tonight, The Americans by Robert Frank (1958). A friend left it here with couple other books before Christmas. I went downstairs to search for it. I was left with Robert Frank’s spectators.
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In page 37 a young girl working in a cafe or a similar place, is staring towards an unseen space at the left. It could be anywhere in America in the 1950s, when Frank went on the roads with his camera – in fact, the book does not provide any caption for this photo.
Despite my unfortunate absence for few weeks, and now just by the last day of January, here is the first post of the month and the year… The most exciting thing recently meeting my senses, which is no less than an omen of those promising and welcoming things to come.. So…
Let the new year begin!
‘Dissemblance en série’. Montage vidéo de ma dernière production chorégraphique présentée en avril 2007 à l’Agora de la danse. (‘Serial Dissimilarity’. Contemporary dance choreography presented at Studio de l’Agora de la dance, Montreal, april 2007).
Interprètes: Julie Bessette, Cathy Bourgoin, Caroline Carreau, Caroline Charbonneau, Gabriel Doucet, Marie-Pière Durocher et Audrée Hotte.
Musique: Les 4 saisons – L’été – Presto • Antonio Vivaldi.
Choreography and vdeo by Pascal Desparois.
“It was a piece about feeling different and not fitting in, and realizing that everyone felt the same way. It also talked about our trueselves vs the projected image of our selves and the disfunction between the two (the reason for the mirror & the videos).” Pascal Desparois
Untitled photograph by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved
“In the modern way of seeing, reality is first of all appearance – which is always changing. A photograph records appearance. The record of photography is the record of change, of the destruction of the past. Being modern (and if we have the habit of looking at photographs, we are by definition modern), we understand all identities to be constructions. The only irrefutable reality – and our best clue to identity – is how people appear.”
