Paris Photo is the highlight exhibition this month in Paris. PARIS PHOTO FAIR November 10–13, 2022. Grand Palais Ephémère, is the leading international fair dedicated to the photographic medium, is held each November in the heart of Paris. There are hundreds of exhibitors & galleries and agencies on show from all over the world.
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Unframing Colonialism – Photo Exhibit, Centre Pompidou
November 7th 2022 – February 27th 2023 Galerie de photographies, Forum -1, The Centre Pompidou
Photographers represented (a non-exhaustive list) : Adam Pierre, Albin-Guillot Laure, Bellon Denise, Boucher Pierre, Feher Emeric, Ichac Pierre, Kollar François, Krull Germaine, Lipnitzky Boris, Lotar Eli, Man Ray, Parry Roger, Rudomine Albert, Steiner André, Tabard Maurice, Ubac Raoul, Verger Pierre, Zuber René
“Do not visit the colonial exhibition” …. Reacting to the opening of the Paris Colonial Exhibition in Vincennes in 1931, the members of the Surrealist group denounced France’s imperialist policy.
The “Unframing Colonialism” exhibition proposes to review this unique episode and the visual images generated at the time through photography, which enjoyed considerable popularity in the contemporary press and publishing industry of the period.
In response to the Colonial Exhibition of 1931, the members of the Surrealist group published handouts and organised, along with a fringe of the radical left, a counter-exhibition entitled “The Truth about the Colonies”.
Although the Surrealist movement since its creation had maintained tense relations with the Communist Party, their mutual opposition to colonialism represented political common ground, culminating in the early 1930s in “The Truth about the Colonies”, which brought together objects, statistics and photographs.
Echoing this event, Man Ray, the American photographer, conducted a “reportage” on the colonial exhibition in the form of a brief enigmatic notebook. Although its circulation was limited, in it we can nevertheless decipher a powerful denunciation of the artificiality and violence, particularly sexual, of the system of colonisation.
One of the rare copies, formerly belonging to Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles and currently in the collections of the Musée national d’art moderne, provides the starting point of this exhibition.
Placed into perspective with the historical, social and political issues of the time, “Unframing Colonialism” is a continuation of the exhibition and research projects associated with the acquisition of the Bouqueret collection in 2011, with “This is Paris”, “She’s Modern, She’s a Photographer” and “Photography : A Class Weapon”.
The exhibition uses the photography department collection and documents from the Kandinsky Library to explore the tensions and ambivalence running through the production of the new photographic scene in Paris at the time: a pseudo-scientific fascination for so-called exotic cultures, fetishisation and eroticisation of black bodies, sharing in the renewal of ethnography and contributing to the elaboration of a new image of the nation
Curator Damarice Amao, curator, assisted by Lilah Rémy, research associate, Photography department, Musée national d’art moderne
The Centre Pompidou
75191 Paris cedex 04 / T. 00 33 (0)1 44 78 12 33
Metro : Hôtel de Ville, Rambuteau / RER Châtelet-Les-Halles
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