From the chair that supports his 91 springs body, Franck Horvat discovers the hunging of The Crossing of Paris, an exhibition that pays him tribute in the Espace Museums until April 30, 2020. “You say I like this city, but I also hate it, “he muses.
Yet it is Paris, his adopted city since the late fifties, which inspired most of his work.
Very much influenced by Cartier-Bresson, whom he met in 1950, he began his career in photojournalism. The success is not long coming, returning from a two-year journey in India, he was selected in 1955 by Edward Steichen to participate in the exhibition The Family of Man at MOMA.
His benevolent eyes are attached to the inhabitants, to the crowd, to individuals in the spirit of humanist photography of the time, as did the works of Robert Doisneau and Willy Ronis.
From 1957, he applies his experience of reporter to fashion photography, with a more free and realistic style than that of magazines of the time. His publications in ELLE, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, in Europe as in the United States, had a lasting impact on the genre.
He took his models down to the street, showed them in cafés, installed them on a bus, surprised them in Les Halles, represented them at the racetrack or in a sports stadium among the spectators, associating daily life and studied pose.
Organized in four parts, the exhibition focuses on showing the Paris of Horvat: Paris the city and people, Paris by night, Paris fashion and Paris celebrities. About fifty prints and twenty publications, scenographed around a large format of the famous Givenchy Hat.
We meet with nostalgia a police officer who seems to improvise dance steps place of the Opera, a sublimely sophisticated model at the restaurant ” Chien qui fume”, the shadow of Coco Chanel watching behind the scenes the smooth running of her fashion show, or the last alterations of a costume designer on the dancers of the Folies Bergères, all immortalised with the same tenderness by this master of black and white.
Agnès Vergez
The free access exhibition, is available to travelers leaving for long distance flight at Roissy CDG, in an original 250m ² space created by the Paris Airport with the complicity of the agency Artcurial Culture.
November 1, 2019 to April 30, 2020
Exhibition accessible to all travelers with a boarding pass
from Terminal 2 E, Hall M.
Free admission.
