After the United States, Marion Dubier-Clark set course for Japan in 2016, to explore the country from Tokyo to Kyoto. Discover her exhibition at the Patrick Gutknecht Gallery in Paris.
In 2000, in the company of her musician and photographer partner, Marion Dubier-Clark discovered SX 70 Polaroid film, an aging instant film technology that seems to be heading for extinction. A short training course at the photography school EFET in Paris provides her with the basics, enough to satisfy an appetite for images and travel. She traveled to the United States, the country of her not so distant childhood, on two occasions, in the month of October in 2005 and again in 2006, first to New York, then to San Francisco. Taking instant images in square format, Marion Dubier-Clark rediscovers an America of dreams, full of wonder. The sights discovered in city streets and at crossroads offer a singular vision, alternating without any warning between the view of the whole and the detail, revealing instant street photography right alongside posed portrait. Other journeys follow, and a body of work takes shape among fine art prints based on the Polaroid images or on digital shots that have replaced them as another interesting and convenient medium.
Marion Dubier-Clark took advantage of the freedom offered by these formats in her major projects investigating childhood and adolescence and intergenerational relations, mainly published in journals. In Spring 2016, she discovered Japan, traveling from Tokyo to Matsumoto, Takayama, Kanazawa, Osaka, and Kyoto, and to the islands of Naoshima and Teshima. The country became in turn a vast territory of inspiration in the areas of abstraction, nature, cultural heritage, and humanity. As far away from the rigors of documentary photography as she is from the tradition of the road movie, bypassing the tradition/modernity dichotomy which has saturated Western perception with a sense of wonder, Marion Dubier-Clark protects the poetic license of isolated views and the suggestive power of individual shots to create an inspired personal vision. Having abandoned Polaroid once it was discontinued, she switched to digital Fuji camera that preserves the square format so well suited to this finely balanced territory. Her perfectly framed photographs capture storefront signs, human figures encountered in the street, forms of daily life or sacred ritual, sculpted nature with its branches and blossoms. Even while she refines her style as an artist attentive to her aesthetic choices, Marion Dubier-Clark offers a aesthetic and sensory evocation of Japan and reveals an exoticism as elegant as calligraphy and as austere as a rock garden.
Hervé Le Goff
Hervé Le Goff is a French journalist, art critic, and essayist specializing in photography. He lives and works in Paris.
Marion Dubier-Clark, From Tokyo ot Kyoto
From June 2 to August 26, 2017
Galerie Patrick Gutknecht Paris
78 rue de Turenne
75003 Paris
France
www.gutknecth-gallery.com
The publication of From Tokyo to Kyoto by Marion Dubier-Clark complements the exhibition.
Price: €29
