Pierre Leguillon features
Diane Arbus:
A Printed Retrospective 1960 – 1971
December 6, 2008 – February 8, 2009
Opening:
Friday, December 5, from 6 to 9pm
Press preview at 11pm
19 bis – 21 rue des Trois Frères,
75018 Paris, France
This retrospective of the works of Diane Arbus (1923–1971), featured by Pierre Leguillon, is the first organized in France since an exhibition at Centre Pompidou in 1980. It brings together a collection of the New York photographer’s images commissioned by the Anglo-American press in the 1960s.
The exhibition presents the original pages, from the magazines in which the images were published, including Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Nova and The Sunday Times Magazine.
The exhibition, a selection from a collection of more than 150 photographs, reveals this particular part of the artist’s work, less known in France, and shows the great variety of subjects dealt with: photo journalism, anonymous and celebrity portraits (Norman Mailer, Jorge Luis Borges, Lilian and Dorothy Gish, Marcello Mastroianni, Mrs. Martin Luther King…), children’s fashion and several “photographic essays”— the images are captioned or commented on by the photographer herself. The choice of presenting the original magazines in the exhibition emphasizes the formal layout choices, and displays the photographs within the original social or political context of that time.
In addition, Pierre Leguillon creates parallels between these works and a selection of texts or images by other photographers (Walker Evans, Annie Leibovitz, Victor Burgin, Wolfgang Tillmans, Documentation Céline Duval, Matthieu Laurette, Bill Owens) which are direct, or indirect, references to the images displayed in the exhibition, thus underlining the contemporaneousness of this major 20th century work.
The exhibition may be interpreted in relation to the history of photography, because it is the result of an extensive research process and puts together this image collection for the first time. The exhibition is also relevant in terms of media and press history, since the technical aspects specific to that field stand out so obviously.
These multiple ways to consider the exhibition echo the different roles and viewpoints adopted by Pierre Leguillon as an artist. The Printed Retrospective presents itself as an artwork/exhibition/collection, placing all these notions at the center of reflection as well as the concepts of original and copy. Indeed, from once being mass distributed items to becoming rare objects today, the chosen magazine pages still constitute the original publications of these photographs by Diane Arbus. We can see them exactly as they were conceived and created by the photographer: in their original format, frame, and relation to the texts.
The exhibition is co-produced by Kadist Art Foundation and Centre Régional de la Photographie Nord Pas-de-Calais (Douchy-les-Mines), where it will be presented from March 28 to June 1 2009.
Kadist Art Foundation
19 bis – 21 rue des Trois Frères,
75018 Paris, France
Gallery Hours: Thursdays-Sundays, 2-7pm
