ENCOUNTER

Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land

  • Israël, Germany
  • 2019
  • en
  • en
  • 72
Direction: Gilad Baram

Josef Koudelka is a fiercely independent artist. Branded an exile, stateless for many years after the end of the Prague Spring, photography is for him a powerful act that shows both humanity and its unsettling strangeness. His images are imbued with bohemian freedom and a dull, inhospitable promise. So when he was asked to go and photograph in Israel, the fear of being politically exploited, the fact of having to accept his designated young guide (to control him? he wondered)... mistrust almost won out. It was overcome by a mixture of rejection of "the wall" and attraction for this symbolic land. He simply insisted on paying for his own plane ticket, so as not to owe anything to anyone. What happened next, between him and his young guide Gilad Baram, is a truly romantic story. A friendship was born between the old photographer and the young filmmaker. Gilad Baram had the intelligence to turn these moments into a magnificent film, adopting the right distance and documenting the work of this demanding photographer.

Josef Koudelka is a fiercely independent artist. Branded an exile, stateless for many years after the end of the Prague Spring, photography is for him a powerful act that shows both humanity and its unsettling strangeness. His images are imbued with bohemian freedom and a dull, inhospitable promise. So when he was asked to go and photograph in Israel, the fear of being politically exploited, the fact of having to accept his designated young guide (to control him? he wondered)... mistrust almost won out. It was overcome by a mixture of rejection of "the wall" and attraction for this symbolic land. He simply insisted on paying for his own plane ticket, so as not to owe anything to anyone. What happened next, between him and his young guide Gilad Baram, is a truly romantic story. A friendship was born between the old photographer and the young filmmaker. Gilad Baram had the intelligence to turn these moments into a magnificent film, adopting the right distance and documenting the work of this demanding photographer.

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CREATIVITY

Gilbert Garcin: Anything Could Happen...

  • France
  • 2015
  • fr
  • en
  • 52
Direction: Ralf Kämpfe

Retired, Gilbert Garcin photographs in his garden shed. His world is appealing, he is internationally recognized: a fast-track fairy tale to prove that the world of art is not a closed shop. Garcin is no naïve painter, but a life far from art studies has certainly preserved in him a certain freshness. Nonetheless, we can place him between Teun Hocks and Chema Madoz, photographers with surrealist humour. He prefers to point to Buster Keaton, and his photographic double also evokes Monsieur Hulot. With retirement, anything could happen!

Retired, Gilbert Garcin photographs in his garden shed. His world is appealing, he is internationally recognized: a fast-track fairy tale to prove that the world of art is not a closed shop. Garcin is no naïve painter, but a life far from art studies has certainly preserved in him a certain freshness. Nonetheless, we can place him between Teun Hocks and Chema Madoz, photographers with surrealist humour. He prefers to point to Buster Keaton, and his photographic double also evokes Monsieur Hulot. With retirement, anything could happen!

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Gilbert Garcin: Anything Could Happen...
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INSPIRATION

Dolorès Marat | Dolorès

  • France
  • 2022
  • fr
  • en
  • 70

Against all odds, Dolorès Marat quietly built a personal body of work on the fringes of fashion and the world of contemporary art. Timeless images, evanescent but persistent, like so many interior landscapes bathed in solitude. Working through an alphabet primer from Avignon (at the blue hour) to Ventoux, from the apartment-studio to hanging the "Cascades" exhibition, the director follows in the footsteps of the frugal Dolorès, shy yet bold, always sincere.

Against all odds, Dolorès Marat quietly built a personal body of work on the fringes of fashion and the world of contemporary art. Timeless images, evanescent but persistent, like so many interior landscapes bathed in solitude. Working through an alphabet primer from Avignon (at the blue hour) to Ventoux, from the apartment-studio to hanging the "Cascades" exhibition, the director follows in the footsteps of the frugal Dolorès, shy yet bold, always sincere.

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Dolorès Marat | Dolorès
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SKILL

The cyanotype (with maté) by Carlos Barrantes

  • France
  • 2022
  • es
  • en
  • 34

Carlos Barrantes, master of printing and historical processes, takes us step by step through cyanotypes. From his Perpignan laboratory, he carefully explains his preparations and manipulations, giving an artist's perspective on his choices and decisions. Artist and artisan, he is as visually sensitive as the paper he uses is to light. And he sublimates each photograph into a unique print.

Carlos Barrantes, master of printing and historical processes, takes us step by step through cyanotypes. From his Perpignan laboratory, he carefully explains his preparations and manipulations, giving an artist's perspective on his choices and decisions. Artist and artisan, he is as visually sensitive as the paper he uses is to light. And he sublimates each photograph into a unique print.

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The cyanotype (with maté) by Carlos Barrantes
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MEET

F for Fontcuberta

  • Espagne
  • 2005
  • ca
  • en
  • 57

The real is linked to photography. But it's a deceptive link. Photomontages, staging, angles… the truth is but an illusion. Joan Fontcuberta knows this, and he pokes fun at it with a very Catalan irony and with great erudition. F for Fontcuberta is a "documenter", stepping up the photographer's game by real-fake interviews. In discovering here the forgotten Professor Ameisenhaufen, or the poor cosmonaut Istochnikov, we are seized by doubt: not about whether this is true or false, but why do we want to believe it? We are seized once more, by a liberating laugh at this Fontcuberta who addresses us with a mischievous wink.

The real is linked to photography. But it's a deceptive link. Photomontages, staging, angles… the truth is but an illusion. Joan Fontcuberta knows this, and he pokes fun at it with a very Catalan irony and with great erudition. F for Fontcuberta is a "documenter", stepping up the photographer's game by real-fake interviews. In discovering here the forgotten Professor Ameisenhaufen, or the poor cosmonaut Istochnikov, we are seized by doubt: not about whether this is true or false, but why do we want to believe it? We are seized once more, by a liberating laugh at this Fontcuberta who addresses us with a mischievous wink.

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F for Fontcuberta
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Bettina Rheims (by Serge Bramly)
Serge Bramly by Serge Bramly

Bettina Rheims (by Serge Bramly)

linked to Bettina Rheims, My Life

How to define what photography is, what distinguishes it from its elders, painting, engraving, drawing (to which it was for a long time subservient) or, if you'd rather, what constitutes this specific mode of representation? When Bettina Rheims began her career in the late 1970s, only a small number of books were devoted to photography and the question remained embryonic, possibly unformulated. A few studies were beginning to surface, such as Susan Sontag's; Barthes had not yet published Camera Lucida; rare were the monographs that allowed us to tackle a coherent set of works. In a way it was a new age of pioneers, both for artists and for galleries, and the public and private collections that were gradually emerging.