Throughout 2017, the city of Montpellier invites visitors to immerse themselves in American photography—a favorite subject of Gilles Mora, the artistic director of the Pavillon Populaire. The first exhibition in the series, Notes sur l’asphalte, une Amérique mobile et précaire [Notes on the asphalt: A mobile and insecure America], opened in early February. It showcases works by six American urbanists, designers, and scholars studying life along US highways between 1959 and 1990. Next we will discover William Gedney, still little known both in Europe and in his home country, followed by the Trilogy by Ralph Gibson, the founder of fine art photography who has had a tremendous influence on photography publishing.
The current exhibition brings together works by Donald Appleyard, John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Allan Jacobs, Chester Liebs, Richard Longstreth, and David Lowenthal. Over the four decades, 1950-1990, these researchers traveled around the US, documenting both cityscapes and the countryside. All these men enjoyed renown in their respective fields of architecture, urbanism, and/or landscape, and all treated documentary photography as a tool facilitating research into popular ways of building and inhabiting.
The nearly 200 photographs featured at the Pavillon Populaire had only ever been shown in the context of specialty publications and university curricula. They are documentary photographs and research items exploring different modes of landscape appreciation.
While the researchers focus on everyday scenery, the themes they tackle are diverse: endangered habitats in rural settings, the makeshift character of workers’ housing, and billboards littering the roadside, to name a few. Far from homogeneous townscapes, they show the vernacular side of America: always crammed and precarious.
Five of those six photographers shot in color at a time when black and white was still the norm in documentary photography. Thanks to an ingenious scenography design, the exhibition Notes sur l’asphalte: une Amérique mobile et précaire, curated by Jordi Ballesta and Camille Fallet at the Pavillon Populaire, takes visitors on a virtual road trip across the United States.
Notes sur l’asphalte, une Amérique mobile et précaire, 1950-1990
February 8 to April 16, 2017
Pavillon Populaire-Espace d’art photographique
Esplanade Charles de Gaulle
34000 Montpellier
France
