An interview with François Cheval, chief curator at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce (France) and sponsor of Circulation(s) 2013. Interviewed by Juliette Deschodt.
How does it work when one is both a museum curator and involved in a festival like Circulation(s) ?
F. Cheval: I agreed to help out with the festival because, intellectually, Marion Hislen and I are very close. There’s something fresh, almost naive about Marion’s belief in culture, and that’s rare today.
The photography world is full of people who have been there for a long time—some of them for too long—so it’s good to have people like Marion who want to explore new things and new forms.
What is your role in the festival ?
F.C: First, I was president of the jury. Fetart made an initial selection. Then I sat on the jury that selected around thirty portfolios. Finally, I was allowed to select four artists whom I considered young and promising.
You selected Philippe Pétremant, Morgane Denzler, Stan Guigui and Manon Recordon, artists who work in different media. Why this choice ?
F.C: Philippe Pétremant’s work is intelligent and very funny. The way he uses photography is deprived of sense—it’s nonsense. His pictures are like games that raise the question of an alternative visual reality.
With Morgane Denzler, you have something that concerns many people today: the relationship between photography, volume and sculpture. How can photography occupy space?
I’m confident that Stan Guigui’s series is an instant cult classic. He shot it in a neighborhood in Bogota that’s full of thieves. He somehow managed to enter into this impenetrable place and get to know these people, and they let him take their picture. It’s like a mausoleum of strange people, and Guigui revives them all through light.
What I like about Manon Recordon is her ability to makes things that are simple, humble, patched together. All that these artists have in common is their intelligence, hard work and innovation. And that’s already a lot.
In your introduction, you highlight, somewhat cynically, the importance of networks in photography and the difficulty of being a young photographer.
F.C: There’s nothing cynical about my text. It’s simply the kind of thing you can write when you reach a certain age. I’ve been a curator for thirty years and I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen how the art market infects the young. It’s like smallpox and the lower clergy. I just wanted to write a text, now that I have some distance, about what it means to be young. And being young doesn’t mean anything in itself. All that matters are the conditions of productions at a given time.
You can read the full interview on the French version of Le Journal.
