Le Château d’eau – Château d’art presents, as part of Bourges 2026 – Le Mois de la Photo, the exhibition Catherine Balet : Looking for the Masters in Ricardo’s Golden Shoes.
“Looking for the Masters in Ricardo’s Golden Shoes” is a collaboration between an artist fascinated by the evolution of photography and her friend Ricardo, her model and muse. The project, initiated in July 2013 at the Rencontres photographiques d’Arles as a joyful celebration of the photographers exhibited that year, quickly evolved into a deeper and more ambitious work.
The project has since continued to expand with new tributes to portrait photographers who have written the history of photography.
Opening with the first self-portrait dated 1839, the series seeks to grasp the photographic landscape of the 21st century by examining its past and identifying some of the most recent photographic trends.
Catherine Balet has taken a deep interest in what gives a photograph its iconic status, particularly in today’s world where endless streams of images are consumed in an ocean of frenetic communication. Fascinated by the way the Web has simultaneously decontextualized images while diminishing our capacity to pay attention to what we see in them, the photographer set out to closely study the photos that have formed the foundations of our photographic visual culture.
An accomplice in the process, Ricardo slips into the skin of a woman or a young boy with extraordinary elegance and naturalness. In front of Catherine Balet’s lens, he embodies the figures of iconic photographs, with the utmost respect for the original authors.
The photographer aimed to reproduce the very essence of the original photograph: she reconstructed the details that contribute to the power of the image and sought to render the skin and the beauty of the print’s grain.
Through this work, she questions the dematerialization of photography as well as the nature of the notion of authorship in the process of re-creation. She also explores the vast repertoire of advanced image-processing technologies in a way that questions the medium itself.
Ricardo’s golden shoes wander from one world to another, tracing a sensitive and meticulous path through 187 years of photographic history to create a subjective overview of an imaginary museum. They embody, symbolically, the mysterious photographic alchemy that fixed light and emotions on paper in order to render them forever unalterable.
Catherine Balet’s anthropological approach, the rigor and precision she brings to her work, along with the tenderness and humour that emanate from it, make this body of work an absolute must for any photography enthusiast.
110 photos – Tribute to:
Robert CORNELIUS, Hippolyte BAYARD, Charles NEGRE, Adrien TOURNACHON, NADAR, Pierre-Louis PIERSON, Guillaume-Benjamin DUCHENNE DE BOULOGNE, Etienne CARJAT, Julia Margaret CAMERON, Eadweard MUYBRIDGE, Frederick EVANS, Albert LONDE, Emile ZOLA, Jacques Henri LARTIGUE, Eugène AGTGET, August SANDER, Paul STRAND, Stanisław WITKIEWICZ, Edward CURTIS, Alfred STIEGLITZ, Levis HINE, Alexander RODCHENKO, Edward STEICHEN, Man RAY, Tina MODOTTI, Berenice ABBOTT, Claude CAHUN, Hannah HÖCH, Ilse BING, BRASSÄÏ, Henri CARTIER BRESSON, Wanda WULZ, André KERTESZ, Walker EVANS, Robert CAPA, Edward WESTON, Horst P. HORST, MUG SHOTS, Dorothea LANGE, Gordon PARKS, WEEGEE, Irving PENN, Shoji UEDA, Lisette MODEL, Grete STERN, Gary WINOGRAND, Robert DOISNEAU, Andreas FEININGER, Willy RONIS, Erwin BLUMENFELD, Arnold NEWMAN, Marc RIBOUD, Bill BRANDT, Robert FRANK, Philippe HALSMAN, Saul LEITER, Lucien CLERGUE, Mario GIACOMELLI, William KLEIN, Diane ARBUS, Malik SIDIBE, Anders PETERSEN, William EGGLESTON, Studio FOUAD, PHOTOMATON, Duane MICHALS, Jeanloup SIEFF, Lee FRIEDLANDER, Josef KOUDELKA, Natalia LL, PAPARAZZI, Nicolas NIXON, Helmut NEWTON, Chris KILLIP, Guy BOURDIN, Raymond DEPARDON, Chris STEELE-PERKINS, Annie LEIBOVITZ, Andy WARHOL, Richard AVEDON, David HOCKNEY, Nan GOLDIN, Robert MAPPLETHORPE, John COPLANS, Graciela ITURBIDE, Joel STERNFELD, Daido MORIYAMA, Elliot ERWITT, Sebastiao SALGADO, Thomas STRUTH, Larry CLARK, Thomas RUFF, Rineke DIJKSTRA, Arno Rafael MINKKINEN, Gillian WEARING, Philip-Lorca diCORCIA, Edouard BOUBAT, Sarah MOON, Pierre et Gilles, Nobuyoshi ARAKI, Cindy SHERMAN, Martin PARR, Gilbert GARCIN, Antoine D’AGATA, John STEZAKER, Pieter HUGO, Roman OPALKA
Brigitte Patient, Exhibition Curator
Exhibition
Catherine Balet : Looking for the Masters in Ricardo’s Golden Shoes
en collaboration avec Ricardo Martinez Paz
Exhibition from 23 May to 30 August 2026
Château d’eau – Château d’art
Place Séraucourt
18000 Bourges, France
https://www.ville-bourges.fr/site/chateau-eau
Free admission Tuesday to Sunday from 3 pm to 7 pm
Book
Catherine Balet : Looking for the Masters in Ricardo’s Golden Shoes
Published by Dewi Lewis Publishing
Text in English
120 photographs, 2016
256 pages
gilt edge
170 x 220 mm
45€
www.dewilewis.com
