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16/9/2013

Photoquai 2013

Quai Branly Museum, Paris

For its 4th edition, the Photoquai photography biennial is settling on the banks of the Seine, in the garden of the musée du quai Branly, for a two-month period, to present the unpublished works of 40 non-European photographers. This year, all the images presented relate to the human figure: landscapes, objects, fashion or architecture appear in the form of elements that accompany the human being.

PHQ4 artistic director chose 8 transnational collaborators, who are Photoquai ambassadors all around the world. These 8 curators, international photography professionnals or photographers themselves, have proposed images from elsewhere, seen from elsewhere.

The PHQ4′s selection of 40 photographers was made out of almost 200 portfolios proposed to Frank Kalero by the curators. Frank Kalero has elaborated a shortlist and worked together with the Photoquai programmation committee, existing since the creation of the biennial. The programmation committee is constituted of: Stéphane Martin, musée du quai Branly President; Yves Le Fur, Director of Heritage and Collections; Hélène Fulgence, Director of Exhibitions and Publishing; Christine Barthe, Head of the Photography collections; Céline Martin-Raget, head of Publishing and Images Production.

PHQ4: LOOK AT ME!

‘When I’m aware that I’m being photographed,’ Roland Barthes has written, ‘I turn myself into an image.’ For me these words conjure up the elusive, rewarding exchange that occurs when glances meet: that of somebody observed in their environment, of the photographer who catches the moment – and of the unknown outside observer who encounters them both in this way.

This is why I wanted to make people the focus of this 4th edition of Photoquai; not so much as a theme but as a guiding thread. I asked eight curators from Asia, Latin America, Australia and Africa to set about tracking down photographers still unknown in Europe. The 200-some artists they came up with resulted in a selection of 40 reportages, each an echo of our world, a reflection of human contact and moments to be shared without restriction. Each group of images conveys the same overall, personal hope, almost in the form of an appeal: ‘Look at me!’ Points of view from elsewhere: people seen and those who see them, the real world observed without resort to exoticism, prejudice or ethnic categories.

Today the boundaries between personal and public life are crumbling, just as the distances between people are dissolving. The digital images fostered and transmitted by the new media – especially the social networks – are exchanged and shared in real time, at dazzling speed. This omnipresence can often trivialise them, but at the same time they remain a narrative description of lives, contexts and environments which we can now understand more easily and which are enhancing immediate, global communication. Presented as walls of images along the Seine – just outside the Musée du Quai Branly and in its gardens – this kind of contemporary reality offers the eye a multitude of identities. It calls on the spectator – a stroller, a photography lover or just somebody curious – to stop and observe. To ‘read’ our planet through people who are letting themselves to be looked at. And maybe to come to an awareness shared with the photographer who creates an image and the person who offers his image to a complete unknown. This multifaceted vision of things has all the power of a conversation in which empathy and art are sources of mutual understanding. Saudi women masking their faces in London, Catholic religious services taking place in shopping malls in the Philippines – different, totally unrelated stories. Yet each homes in on people in their usual setting, with all their hopes, paradoxes, pain and wisdom. There are no borders here: these images are part of a human geography, as people willingly offer up their everyday privacy in a narrative that shows rather than demonstrates, states without making claims.

Photography halts the clouds in their tracks. As a metaphor of time, it provides a pause. With a single tiny detail – a scrap of paper on the ground, a stray dog – it can turn a description into a symbol. With a portrait – a silhouette even – it can reveal another world, sum up a whole society, show man as the measure of all things and the human figure as the true scale of the universe. This is the meaning of this edition of Photoquai, for everyone to absorb, interpret and share.

I’m no theoretician. I’m more like a one-man band thirsting for dialogue. To shatter the frontiers, both literally and figuratively, I spontaneously multiply my globalised, globalist uses of the image: through the documentary magazines I’ve started – Ojodepez in Madrid, The world according to in Berlin, Punctum in New Delhi – and the festivals whose artistic director I am. For me photography is a springboard for dialogue, demanding constant commitment to others with no goal except the celebration of life.

Frank Kalero, 2013

Frank Kalero, founder of Punctum Magazine, is responsible Photoquai's 2013 artistic direction.

Full program on www.quaibranly.fr

Direction de la communication
Nathalie Mercier, directeur de la communication +33 1 56617020 nathalie.mercier@quaibranly.fr

International Press
Heymann Renoult Associées - Hélène Muron +33 1 44617676 h.muron@heymann-renoult.com

Inauguration september 17 - 22, 11a.m. - 9p.m.

Quai Branly museum
206 et 218 rue de l’Université ou par les 27, 37 ou 51 quai Branly – 75007 Paris
Hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday from 11am to 7pm, ticket office closes at 6pm
Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 11am to 9pm, ticket office closes at 8pm
Free entrance

stampa

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