From the 25th to the 28th of July will be Pierrevert’s Nuits photographiques. Stéphane Kossmann, the director of the festival, presents them as follow:
After the beautiful occasion of the ten years of the festival, photographic Nights will resume their rhythm, with the usual rendez-vous from July 23rd to July 28th in Pierrevert under the leadership of a prestigious sponsor, Marco Glaviano.
And as every year, our artistic season will begin at the Carzou Foundation with the inauguration on June 29 th of an exhibition of a no less illustrious photographer, friend of the long-time photographic Nights, Bernard Plossu. He is indeed familiar with the festival where he has already exhibited and where he has come several times. The department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence is also familiar to him. A few years ago, he was welcomed by the Gassendi Museum to illustrate the Route of Contemporary Art between Digne les Bains and the Province of Cuneo, following the same route the painter Paul Martin had travelled in a carriage more than a century ago. The comparative vision of a travel diary in watercolors and photos was interesting.
But Bernard Plossu has journeyed far beyond our borders, and it is in Mexico that he brings us through this exhibition entitled “Back and Forth: Both Sides of the Mexican-American Border” Echoing the current situation between the two countries, he offers us in a new way a magnificent series of photos vis-à-vis, which he made between 1965 and 1985, on both sides of the border.
It tells us about an era. One sees there the freedom of an eye, which according to its wanderings, lets itself be carried by a frenetic desire to seize the world like it is, in its humblest dimension. This will be the postulate of Bernard Plossu.
To accompany these photos, his son Joaquim, proposes a sound creation that was inspired by the two universes on both sides of the Mexican-American border.
Stéphane Kossmann, President of Photographic Nights
In the great American desert, Apache Mescaleros and Chiricahuas tribes, Hopis, Navajos, Yaquis, Huichols, Tarahumaras, Seris … have always lived.
Then the Spaniards arrived, and later the Anglos, that is, the whites.
Terrible conflicts have begun between the two countries, Alamo, Columbus, and also with the Indians. The Mexican soldiers massacred the whole family of Geronimo, one day of St Jerome, from where its name of war: “Geronimo”.
And the Apaches are still fighting for his bones to leave the fort where he is buried, still a prisoner, in Oklahoma, and brought back to Arizona.
In the twentieth century, these gigantic spaces, this country of the wind, became the place of 3 of the biggest cities of the world: Mexico City, Los Angeles and Dallas.
There are Mexico and the United States of America: dirt tracks have become 10 – lane highways!
And despite their proximity, these two nations are incredibly different.
Nothing to see ! What sets them apart, when we go from one to the other, are things like noises and smells: the incredible sensation of desilence on the American side, and the deafening side of thousands of noises as soon as we get back in Mexico ! similarly, the smells of tacos and hamburgers …
For years, from 1966 to 1985 I kept going from one to the other, by the road, with the gigantic essence stop of Matehuala!
The first time, in the summer of 1966, I went from Mexico DF to Carmel and Big Sur to bring back a car: I did not expect such a difference, which is immediate as soon as you change country!
Same goes down, when we go from San Diego to Baja California, the arrival in Tijuana is literally another world!
Passing through border towns like Nogales, Douglas or Ciudad Juarez, disembark at Yuma or Deming or Lordsburg, or Chihuaha or Monterrey, what emotions, and even what anguish! This is what the photos of this exhibition, these trips and returns,
Back and forth, on both sides of the Mexican-American border
As Kerouac had written: “Just across the street, Mexico was starting. We looked amazed. To our astonishment, it looked like Mexico. »(In» On the road «.)
All that was in the twentieth century, … .. before …!
Bernard Plossu, March 2019
Bernard Plossu – Back and Forth: Both sides of the Mexican-American border
from June 29 to September 29, 2019
Pierrevert Photographic Nights
Carzou Foundation of Manosque
7-9 Boulevard Elemir Bourges
04100 Manosque
