This book looks back over a large part of Gérard Rondeau’s career and is an invitation to meander and explore the different, sometimes timeless worlds he portrays. The book is like a chronical in which he reveals his very personal interpretation of the city of Reims and its cathedral. It also takes us on a visit through the Champagne region via a series of anonymous portraits produced at the end of the 1980s.
“J’avais posé le monde sur la table” (I set the world on the table) covers Gérard Rondeau’s comings and goings between eastern France and Sarajevo under siege, its geography following the traces of both the first world war and the more recent conflict in Yugoslavia. A remarkable journey whose interest lies in his excursions to WW1 sites as well as to areas marked by war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Images are often confronted on the basis of their geography but here, the very personal photographs of Gérard Rondeau, which are both poetic and surreal at the same time, and the use of text – from literary passages ( from Christian Caujolle, Jean Clair, Philippe Dagen, Bernard Frank, Olivier Frébourg, Jean-Paul Kauffmann and Bernard Noël) to handwritten captions – takes us well beyond the realm of travel photography to a voyage through time.
In the second part of the book we are treated to some of the many portraits of contemporary painters and writers shot by Gérard Rondeau, portraits that, instead of capturing an attitude or a characteristic, aim to seize the more off-guard moments, times when the subject is more unaware, which are no doubt more revealing.
The book has been published instead of a catalogue for the exhibition of the same name that is on in Reims until February 6th 2016.
BOOK
J’avais posé le monde sur la table
Gérard Rondeau
Éditions des Équateurs, Paris 2015
Release November 26th, 2015
288 pages
59.00 €
ISBN : 9782849904329
http://editionsdesequateurs.fr
EXHIBITION
J’avais posé le monde sur la table
Gérard Rondeau
From November 6th 2015 to February 6th, 2016
Le Cellier – espace culturel
Rue de Mars
51100 Reims
France
Wednesday to Sunday 2pm – 6pm
http://www.gerardrondeau.com
