Vertigo 1
Vertigo 1
The Exhibition presents a set of portraits of political celebrities - or the main
actors on the public stage - made for the daily paper Le Monde's special page,
'décryptages-portraits' between 2005-2006.
What does a politician - male or female - offer a photographer when the latter asks
him/her to be him/herself?
The Art of the portrait is that of a research into the motions of one's soul. These
portraits, created in very little time, show the reverse side of personalities which
are locked up by the media. The question is to give a true picture.
But do those whose pictures are constantly fabricated still possess their own image?
Tina Merandon tracks down the precise moment when this image falls down.
The picture will be that which will most strongly bare them, because it will no
longer be a reflection of power, but of a given person.
Bringing them to sit for the picture as if it were a kind of surrender shows more
clearly how they observe their own power and how they let the photographer bear
witness to it.
Here these pictures are rather the result of exhilarating interplay between two
kinds of power. On the one hand, the politicians' will - because they can only
convince with the help of a sharp sense of the image they convey - and on the other
hand the power of the artist - not that of the media - which may only be put into
practice with a sharp sense of the balance to be found between what he/she sees,
what he/she must show, and what he/she may show - not forgetting that he or she is
involved in the power games at play.
An essential counterpoint is the representation of power, with the face of sundry
famous intellectuals : wavering between resignation and helplessness, they are no
longer able to check their leaders' will to power.
Opening: march 15, 2007 6 p.m.
Galerie Hors Sol
4, rue Cherubini - Paris