The Nicéphore Niépce Museum in Chalon-sur-Saône is currently holding two exhibitions until May 22. The first showcases Sudanese Photographs by Claude Iverné, recently awarded the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson Prize; the second focuses on sport and photography with the Exhilaration of movement. The museum’s chief curator, François Cheval, gives us an overview of the new exhibition which brings together the works of interwar avant-garde photographers, such as André Steinr, Jean Moral, Jan Lukas, Pierre Boucher, and Isaac Kitrosser.
At the turn of the twentieth century sport and photography came together to epitomize modernity. They shared the idea of the moment and of instantaneity. Precise by nature and akin to action, photography goes beyond mere documentation; it transposes the inherently fleeting instant.
One would be mistaken to define multiple representations of the body as derivative of the photographic portrait. The portrait is an attempt to gain an insight into psychology. The photographed body, as it is directly captured, is a manifesto. The body needs only itself in order to manifest itself. The portrait calls for a setting, an accumulation of attributes which contaminate it. Thus we imperceptibly move from an overdetermined image encumbered with objects to a denuded image, focused on the consequences of the physical effort. The quest for movement, which delighted the early photography magazines, gives way to a sculptural aesthetics. While Marey or Muybridge were initially useful for the understanding of the human gesture, the domain of photography overlaps in the 1930s with the ancient art of the statuary and the nude. One would be wrong to see in this evolution a transition from the eugenics of physical education to a recognition of intimate space. The collective, social practice of sport suspends the suspicion of indecency or nudity. The naked body loses any erotic connotation in favor of a social ideal.
[…]
Together, sport and photography epitomize modernity. They share the idea of the moment and of instantaneity. Precise by nature and close to action, photography goes beyond mere documentation. It transposes the instant which is by nature fleeting. What the magazine of the 1930’s creates is nothing less than the transfiguration of a simple act into an epic chant. The mechanical image, elevated by a laudatory word, transcends the event in order to transform it into a veritable collective phenomenon.
– François Cheval
EXHIBITION
The Exhilaration of Movement, Sport and Photography
Also : Sudanese Photographs by Claude Iverné
From February 13th to May 22nd, 2016
Musée Nicéphore Niépce
28 quai des messageries
71100 Chalon-sur-Saône
France
03 85 48 41 98
[email protected]
http://www.museeniepce.com
Free Entrance
