Paris, long famous as an art city, has also become well-known for photographic exhibitions and promoting photographic works. From late September to early December there are many shows in the “Paris Mois de la Photo”. This was started in 1980 by Jean-Luc Monterosso, who went on to found the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. In recent years, festivals are also held in Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Rome, Bratislava and Luxembourg.
We happened on the exhibition, PHOTOQUAI, arranged by la Musée du Quai Branly, which ran for almost a month from October 30 to November 25, 2007 (www.photoquai.fr ), along the riverwalk on quai Branly opposite the museum, on either side of the Passerelle (footbridge) Debilly. The passerelle also has 19 artists exhibiting their works in boxes inspired by the bouquinistes. This exhibition, planned to be the first in a biennial series, was in a lovely situation, overlooking the River Seine on one side, the Branly Museum on the other, with the Eiffel Tower soaring behind that.
The exhibition was free, and therefore accessible to all, and seemed to be very well-attended despite many cool, wet and windy days. In fact, it was refreshing to be outdoors looking at something so culturally stimulating, with life on the river continuing as usual—barges loaded with scrap metal, tourist sightseeing boats, gulls diving and squawking. A series of angled low walls each feature a photographer with a text explanation of his/her work and life in French, English and Spanish.
The theme of the exhibition was The World Looking at the World (‘le monde regarde le monde’) and most of (all?) the photographers featured are relatively unknown, but very talented, and one predicts a great future for them. As befits the focus of the Branly Museum—the continents other than Europe— this exhibition also focuses on places outside of Europe: Brazil, Peru, many African countries, China, Vietnam, Australia, Iran, Greenland to name a few. The organizers divided the photos into three broad categories: Metamorphoses, Fictions, Confrontation. Many of the huge photos are not “pretty” in the traditional sense, some are very symbolic, some are deliberately made hazy, but all tell a powerful story of everyday life and problems, or about specific troubling issues, such as prison gangs in South Africa. They make the viewer think, and perhaps assess the world in a different way. We felt privileged to be citizens of Paris at this time! We wandered through twice, on different days, as there’s too much to absorb in one visit.
