The Carré d’Art of Six-Fours-les-plages is offering for its spring exhibition, at the Maison du Patrimoine, on the edge of the Brusc lagoon, the En Voyage exhibition by Françoise Nuñez and Bernard Plossu. With nearly seventy photographs, visitors will be able to take a world tour from the Americas to Asia via Africa.
The selection was difficult as the corpus is rich and of high quality but through the images presented, the viewer will be able to appreciate the characteristic style of these two authors photographer.
Born in Vietnam, raised in Paris, Bernard Plossu discovered photography at the age of 13 with his father in the Sahara. At this age, he had already experienced three continents, had a taste for discovery, and for the others, in short for travel. After a first stay in Mexico from which he brought back founding images of his work, he settled on the West Coast of the United States. From the 1970s, he occupied an essential place in the photographic landscape: his interest in counterculture and Hinduism, which was becoming popular in the West, gave him a taste for libertarian and metaphysical thought. His photographs, on the fringes of reality, break with a certain academicism: blurred, dark, overexposed, his images are paradoxically the fruit of a controlled vision. He always photographs with a 50 mm lens, refusing as a form of puritanism the seduction of spectacular focal lengths, wide angle or telephoto.
Françoise Nuñez, of Spanish origin, was born in Toulouse. Between 1979 and 1980 she was the assistant of Jean Dieuzaide, who participated in the creation of the Rencontres d’Arles and founded the famous galerie du château d’eau. He taught her photography, passing on his passion and the depth of his gaze. Teo, his printer, introduced Françoise to the art of printing, which she continued to practice with talent, particularly for many of the photos of Bernard Plossu that she met there. Love at first sight was immediate, mutual… and eternal. Their relationship was close, united by a rare professional complicity.
She also loved traveling, the only time she devoted herself to taking pictures. She thrives on the unexpected, the surprise, the emotion of discovery that she tried to convey through her photographs, all modesty and reserve.
They travelled independently or together, notably in India, sometimes with Joaquim and Manuela, their children: he photographs horizontally, she vertically, each with their perfectly recognizable style. Discreet, she faded behind him when, in his turn, delicate, he applied himself to making her known.
South America, Senegal, Ethiopia, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Poland, India, Japan, they travelled the world. Unlike most photographers whose spectator posture is there to bear witness to a reality, Françoise and Bernard, like impressionists, shared with us the emotion and spontaneity of lived moments. “In photography, we don’t capture time, we evoke it” says Bernard PLOSSU. Their images are the expression of a deep feeling that no technical artifact can constrain. One of the first impressionists said to a painter friend: “If you see blue, put blue”. This freedom applies perfectly to their work.
Françoise died of a devastating illness three years ago but she is still present in their haven of La Ciotat. This exhibition, which presents their work concomitantly, has the sole ambition of making you share and extending their complicity on the walls.
They are represented by the Camera Obscura gallery https://www.galeriecameraobscura.fr/
Exhibition curator: Philippe Sérénon
Françoise Nuñez & Bernard Plossu : En Voyage
March 30 – May 19, 2024
Maison du patrimoine, François Flohic
Corniche of the islands
83140 Six-Fours-les-plage
www.sixfourscarredarts.fr
