Michael von Graffenried was good friends with Robert Frank. On the occasion of Frank’s centenary, he sent us his images, his text and a video!
I met Robert Frank in 1996 in a restaurant in the Marais, after an exhibition preview at the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris. We immediately spoke Swiss German together. It led to a great friendship. We visited each other regularly, me at his home in Bleeker Street and him at my studio in Brooklyn. In May 2014, we did street photography together in Brooklyn and in Zurich, in his hometown. In Brooklyn, he used dried instant film. Part of the image was undeveloped, leaving room for notes on the photo. In Zurich, we took the tram from one station to another. Robert took some photos.
Robert looked around and saw the businessman on his left. Grabbing the camera, he wonders if he should take a photo. Finally, he takes a photo directly into the businessman’s briefcase. I can’t see what’s in the briefcase and I’ll never know, because the instant photo doesn’t come out of the camera. It doesn’t work. Robert gets angry. He looked at the camera and wondered what he could do. He decided to do a test and took a photo of me in the middle of the tram corridor. The camera automatically triggers a flash when there isn’t enough light. For the photo taken in the briefcase, there was enough light and the flash didn’t go off. But now the flash goes off and attracts the businessman’s attention. He looks first at me, then at Robert. Robert turns his head and looks out of the window as if nothing had happened. We are witnessing two things that every photographer knows. Firstly, the camera worked and the photo is not good, and secondly, the photographer was caught trying to take a photo discreetly without the subject noticing. It’s marvelous.
Michael von Graffenried
Born in 1957, photographer Michael von Graffenried has a background in photojournalism, and now devotes his time to long-term projects using a variety of media. In 2002, the documentary film Guerre sans images – Algérie, je sais que tu sais, co-directed with Mohammed Soudani, was shown at the Locarno Film Festival. His images have been exhibited in galleries and museums in France and Switzerland, as well as in New York, Algiers, Hong Kong and Beirut, and are in the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, the Swiss Foundation for Photography in Winterthur and the Photo Élysée in Lausanne. He has published several books, including Nus au Paradis (Dewi Lewis 1997), Algérie, Photographies d’une guerre sans images (Hazan 1998), Cocainelove (Benteli 2005), Bierfest (Steidl 2014) and Our Town (Steidl 2021). In 2006, Michael von Graffenried was awarded the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres français and the 2010 Erich Salomon Prize. After René Burri and Robert Frank, he is the third Swiss artist to receive an award from the German Photographic Society.
The exhibition is curated by Alessa Widmer and is accompanied by the book “Our Town” published by Steidl, Göttingen, 2021.
Michael von Graffenried : Our Town
Until March 1, 2025
Espace MVG
36 rue Falguière
75015 Paris
www.espacemvg.com
Thursday, Friday, Saturday 2 – 6 pm
