L’Espace Paul Rebeyrolle, in Eymoutiers (France) is paying homage to the photographer and producer Gérard Rondeau who passed away last September 2016, with an exhibition in the form of a journey alongside this committed photographer, citizen of the world, close friend of the land of men.
How are artists recognised ? Certainly, for their world that is like no other, immediately identifiable, for the way he imposed his imagination in a struggle as intense as that of Jacob with the angel. I was always staggered by Gérard Rondeau’s creative force. And yet he only worked with available light, with lightness, discreet even in cities at war like Sarajevo. Physically, he looked like a great bird, morally he was a secretive, courageous being, who nevertheless revealed the essence of a landscape or a portrait, of a tragedy or of the scream of a situation.
He photographed writers writing, painters painting, countries as geographies. He went to all the continents, Asia, Africa, America. He loved Tangier, Benin or Rheims (his city), the electric atmosphere of New York, the bubbles of Champagne. He was always bubbling with excitement, moving, catching his subjects in mid-air, almost by stealth. He surfed the wave. He unfolded, opened out and at the last minute, with strange acrobatics only he knew, showed the evidence of beauty. was he figurative, surrealist, abstract? He made as many transformations as water and its reflections. His pictures could have illustrated Nadia by André Breton or in Search of new skin by Michel Leiris. Gérard Rondeau photographed like a spirit on our tail.
And yet, it seems to me that I knew Gérard Rondeau between the 20th and 21st centuries. He lived in a lightly disordered tower on the banks of the Marne. Piles of books were like Leaning Towers of Pisa made of paper. Not far from the hearth and the fire where the household gods warm themselves, the souvenirs of past journeys arranged according to studied symbolism. Come in amazed traveller! Come closer to the fire. Outside, it’s snowing. See how the silhouettes dance under Gérard Rondeau’s gipsy eye. Cendrars reaches out to Daumal:
“I have within me what makes me happy and distant
And what I carry and what lifts me up”
Olivier Frébourg
Olivier Frébourg is a journalist, writer and a publisher at Éditions des Équateurs. He lives and works in Sainte-Marguerite-sur-Mer, in Normandy (France).
Gérard Rondeau, Dans l’intimité du monde
12th March to 21st May 2017
Espace Paul Rebeyrolle
Route de Nedde
87120 Eymoutiers
France
http://www.espace-rebeyrolle.com/
