Hidden images
dal 7/12/2007 al 28/2/2008
Segnalato da
7/12/2007
Hidden images
Centre national de l'audiovisuel CNA, Luxembourg
The exhibition reveals the collection of amateur films in a new light. By isolating precise moments of this footage, in the form of photographic stills, Yves Dorme, the curator of the exhibition, enables us to see these films via the highlighting of an underlying poetry and expressive force, hitherto hidden amidst the stream of images.
Curator of the exhibition Yves Dorme
The "Images cachées / Hidden images" exhibition reveals this collection of amateur
films in a new light. By isolating precise moments of this footage, in the form of
photographic stills, Yves Dorme, the curator of the exhibition, enables us to see
these films with a fresh eye, via the highlighting of an underlying poetry and
expressive force, hitherto hidden amidst the stream of images.
By producing this project, the CNA hopes to give new impetus to reflection on
amateur films and photography, while contributing to making the extraordinary
richness they contain better known. At the same time, this exhibition raises a host
of questions as to the nature and value (personal, documentary and aesthetic) of
amateur films and photography. It also questions the use that is made of them and
the degree to which consciously or otherwise such documents are manipulated when
they are (re)used in a context for which they were not intended.
"This exhibition came into being by way of chance and surprise. When I discovered
the first "photographs" to emerge from these home movies, it was a moment of pure
pleasure and aesthetic emotion. While working as an editor on a film project based
on excerpts from amateur films from the CNA (National Audiovisual Centre) archive I
was drawn to a certain shot, a certain frame, which I found to be so simply
beautiful and moving that I isolated it, setting it aside, like a "photograph" in
its own right. When, subsequently, a second image caught my eye, I understood that
within these films lay a host of "hidden images", images worthy of featuring in a
genuine exhibition. I thus set out to find them amidst the mass of home movies in
the archive.
Presenting these "photographs" deriving from the world of amateur film could have
been satisfying enough in itself, yet I also wanted to share the pleasure of
discovery and to shed light on the path which led to this change in the status of
the image, this bond which unites all photographs. I was also fascinated by the
relation between what a photograph triggers in the imagination and its "real"
context, something that the singularity of this "freeze-frame" approach allowed.
Lastly, it was a means of showing the wealth and diversity of these family archives
from the CNA collection.
Jeroen de Vries, the designer of this exhibition, has conceived spaces that each
develop and explore a particular universe. Spaces, however, that are not
compartmentalized, but which answer and complete each other. We wanted that the
visitor be thrust, as it were, into this exhibition, that sensation and emotion be
given pride of place. Visitors can view, on computers, the film excerpts from which
the photographs have been taken. They can read the descriptions of the archived
films and catch a glimpse of the chosen still-frame as the stream of images unreels
at normal speed, thereby encountering the archives as they really are. Projected
onto hanging screens will be films that have been fragmented, broken down and
occasionally slowed, so as to provide the physical time to become immersed in them.
And lastly, there are the images themselves, the professionally printed
"photographs". Thus exhibited, they move from the world of amateur film to that of
artistic photography."
Yves Dorme
Coordination: Marguy Conzémius, Michèle Walerich, Myriam Kraemer, Viviane Thill
Collaboration: Michelle Muller
One of the missions assigned to the CNA (National Audiovisual Centre) is the
safeguarding, enhancement and promotion of Luxembourg's audiovisual heritage. In
1995, it launched an appeal to the public, encouraging people to deposit their own
amateur films and home movies. Thus, in the space of ten years the institute has
collected over 5,600 such films, shot for the most part in the grand duchy, or
entrusted to the CNA by Luxemburgers living abroad.
CONFERENCE: "Amateur images: valorisation and manipulation"
20-23 January 2008, Dudelange and Luxembourg
International conference on the use of amateur films and photographs, organized by
the Centre national de l'audiovisuel in collaboration with the University of
Luxembourg.
Centre national de l'audiovisuel
rue du Centenaire Dudelange 1b L-3475 (Grand-Duche' de Luxembourg)