The Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane (French Guiana) has been a biennale since 2015 and, this year, present their 5th edition from November 2 through 26, 2017 around the theme “the land of Men”. Karl Joseph, its artistic director, explains: “This change of rhythm was obvious for us. In fact, for six years we were trying to work on constructing a dialogue between the Guianese territory and photography with the festival, of course, but also to help photographers outside of the festival in their artistic work and to increase workshops for the young public in French Guiana. The creation of the biennale, by slowing down the rhythm of events, has allowed for the continuation and growth of this dialogue.”
A series of residencies thus saw the light in 2017, before the festival. Within the framework of the French-Colombian year, while Ronan Liétar (based in French Guiana) went to Columbia, where he explored the link between farmers and their sense of belonging to the land, Karen Paulina Biswell (French-Columbian photographer) was, for many weeks, side by side with the women of Awala-Yalimapo, a small Native American community of French Guiana. Ramon Ngwete, a young Guianese photographer, made his first trip to metropolitan France thanks to an invitation from the Rencontres, in collaboration with the Transit collective in Montpellier, whereas Guillaume Martial set his suitcases down in Cayenne where he discovered the territory through his themes of predilection, architecture, and imagination.
Among other exhibited work coming from the residencies of this 2017 edition, the biennale opened this year with an exhibition by Jesús Abad Colorado, Columbian photojournalist who covered the armed conflict for several decades and whose work puts emphasis principally on the victims and the civil resistance movement.
Putting an end to the close to four years of research and photographing of the Guianese territory, the longterm work of Miquel Dewever-Plana around the Wayãpi, Wayana, and Teko Native Americans, presented in the form of diptych, brings up the delicate question of identity and the changes facing these populations. His exhibition D’une rive à une autre (From one shore to another) will be wandering among the river communities of Haut-Maroni and Haut-Oyapock to be presented to the populations who participated in the project.
Moreover, the Caribbean chronicles Beyond Paradise by Daniel Goudrouffe, painting a portrait away from the paradisal clichés, will be presented in parallel with his body of work made in New York about the Caribbean community that moved to the big apple.
It is always essential for the Rencontres Photographiques of Guyane to include in each of their programs a patrimonial exhibition in order to (re)accentuate the value of the sometimes forgotten work of local photographers, like that of Pierre Servin, deceased in 2003, who left behind eclectic photographs of French Guiana. His images, which called for important restoration, will be on view at the prefecture of Cayenne, where he was the official photographer in the 1950s.
Finally, two exterior projections will be able to reach the public outside the exhibition spaces: Cap au Nord: Une photographie canadienne and Un plateau, des Guyanes in collaboration with the magazine Une Saison en Guyane and 97px, an overseas photo agency.
Les Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane
From November 2 though 26, 2017
Diverse locations in French Guiana
France
