A seasoned photoreporter, who covered some of the major conflicts which have marked the late 20th and the early 21st centuries, since 2010 Eric Bouvet has been also devoting time to a personal body of work, which he considers to be a much needed breath of air. A selection of his images from the three series Burning Man, Rainbow Family, and Sex Love is currently on view at the Hegoa Gallery in an exhibition evocatively titled, Vivre libre—Living free.
“I have decided to feature Eric Bouvet’s work in order to share his poetic gaze and his aesthetic approach to reality,” explains Nathalie Atlan Landaburu who launched the Hegoe Gallery four years ago. While the gallery presents an eclectic mix of photography, sculpture, and visual arts, it shows a strong commitment to reporting and to documentary art mediums, and more specifically to travel photography. The upcoming two exhibitions are a case in point: they will spotlight the work of Pierre de Vallombreuse, with an exhibition entitled In the footsteps of Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Sarah Caron’s images from Cuba, spanning 1994 to 2016.
For the moment, however, it’s Eric Bouvet whom we’ve come to see. As many versatile photographers, Eric Bouvet is above all a reporter who covers conflicts around the world: Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya, Ukraine, the refugee camps at Calais…, stories which earned him many accolades, including five World Press awards, two Visa d’or awards at the Festival Visa pour l’Image, and the Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents, to name a few. While he has not abandoned that side of his work, since 2010 he has sidelined topical issues to immerse himself in the lives of those who periodically escape the constraints and comforts of modernity in order to experience oneness with nature. He has accompanied these members of the Rainbow Family into Brazil and Tennessee, to Slovakia and Guatemala—four journeys into the wild. The absence of electricity inspired Eric Bouvet to adapt his shooting technique and work with large-format instant film which he processes using bleach.
For the series Burning Man, documenting an annual gathering that takes place in Nevada where he traveled in 2012 and 2016, Bouvet used a digital camera. The atmosphere is completely different but emanates the same spirit of “love & peace,” this time in a festive setting, somewhere at the outer edge of reality. Lastly, Sex Love, a series done using a white background — the format favored by Richard Avedon in the American West, noted Bouvet — is a pageant of S&M, trans, striptease, and bondage.
Three series assembled over time depict, each in its own way, visions of separate worlds which fill the three discrete spaces of the Hegoa Gallery: an exhibition that’s food for the soul!
Sophie Bernard
Eric Bouvet, Vivre libre
February 24 to March 25, 2017
Galerie Hegoa
16 rue de Beaune
75007 Paris
France
