There are fewer photography galleries at Art Paris this year, but photography is still everywhere you look, and most stands had at least a few images on display. Often accused of being trivial or documentary, a portrait is considered successful if the photographer manages to create an iconic image, as in the work of Richard Dumas (Galerie VU, Paris), the series Lamb et Sumo by Denis Rouvre (Galerie Hélène Bailly, Paris) or the “stolen pictures” of Ron Galella and Claude Gassian (A. Galerie, Paris). The large enigmatic portraits of Halim Al Karim (Galerie Imane Farès and Patrice Trigano, Paris), the embroidered family photographs of Carolle Benitah (Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, Paris), the unknown portraits adopted by Zane Mellupe as his own family (Found Family, Ifa Gallery, Shanghai) and the albumen prints where Nandan Ghiya pixelates his subjects’ faces (à la Facebook) or places them in improbable situations (Galerie Paris-Beijing and 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong) are examples where the portrait serves as a reference to an absolute reality, becoming an essential element in the (re)construction of identity.
Christophe Lunn
Read the full article on the French version of Le Journal.
