Last year, the Réattu Museum featured Oser la photographie (Daring Photography), an exhibition celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the museum’s photography collection. Réattu continues to show its holdings with the latest thematic exhibition devoted to the portrait in the exhibition Imago.
Nowadays, the very notion of portrait immediately invokes photography, rather than painting. But at what point does the photographic portrait become a work of art? The identity of the model contributes less and less to the value of the image. Thus, the fascinating subject of the human figure has become the theme of choice for photographers who boundlessly innovate this practice and the genre.
Through a selection of rarely exhibited works, the museum has tackled the subject of portraiture and the many questions it raises, such as the question of the modality of portrait execution in an intimate or artistic setting, posed or spontaneous. The exhibition, as a whole, further foregrounds the formal research conducted by some photographers. The use of soft focus, distortion, and framing are examples of attempts at going beyond the human face as a subject of photography.
This exhibition is also tightly intertwined with the history of photography in Arles, which is evoked through a series of portraits by Georges Tourdjman, featuring Man Ray alongside Maryse Cordesse, Lucien Clergue, and Jean-Maurice Rouquette, as well as a number of photographers who have participated in the annual photography festival of the Rencontres d’Arles.
EXHIBITION
Imago, Portraits Photographiques
From February 6th to June 5th, 2016
Musée Réattu
10 rue du Grand Prieuré
13200 Arles
France
http://www.museereattu.arles.fr
