The images rarely cost more than one hundred euros, and yet some are wonders. The place is called: Un livre, une image. The owner, Emmanuelle Fructus talks about herself.
In 2006, I decided to create a structure dedicated to photography, A book – an image bringing together artists’ books and vernacular photography. Gradually, this anonymous photograph takes up more space and, in 2010, I open in Paris a small gallery where collectors, artists and photography lovers consult my picture library that I enriched day after day.
I go to flea markets, old paper markets, and sometimes on the web. By my training as a photography historian, I articulate my choices around the specificities of amateur and professional photography.
I like to identify these practices, to value them and to grasp the stakes. Finally, I feel more like an iconographer, an image passer. The diversity of uses is a major focus in my work of collecting . I enjoy acquiring an id picture as well as a fine print. All in a reasonable price range, so that everyone can have fun, because one of the specificities of anonymous photography is precisely to have regular access to these images. The acquisition of any image is for me a strong act wether one is an informed collector or not. It is also by buying that one learns, and this photography allows it amply if one has a little time to find them.
The race for masterpiece dos not stimulate me, even though I acquire these images when opportunities arise. Everyday photography fascinates me more. Thus, I create collections and draw up inventories on various subjects such as moving, eating, working, celebrating, having fun … and on the variety of photographic practices. I like to collect documentary and / or aesthetic images from the point of view of the photographer as well as subjects photographed.
My iconographic archive now allows artists, galleries, institutions, to find photographs that they integrate into their work.
And for about the last ten years, I developed a personal work in which old photography is my main material of creation and reflection.
Emmanuelle Fructus
Un livre – une image
17, Rue Alexandre Dumas
75011 PARIS
www.unlivreuneimage.free.fr
Sur rendez-vous / By appointment
www.emmanuellefructus.com
