Galerie Folia in Paris is exhibiting Urban Jungle, 2017 the photographs of Guillaume Zuili, winner of the Prix Camera Clara 2017.While the Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière shows the série Smoke and Mirrors until February 10th.
Created in 2012, the Camera Clara photo award is reserved to artists who work with a view camera. It awards the work of an artist, unpublished and unseen and presented as a photographic series or ensemble, it is judged on its coherence. The 2017 winner of this award is Guillaume Zuili, a photographer born in Paris and now an American citizen.
The memory of European cities was long one of his subjects of predilection and inspiration. Becoming interested in the double-exposure technique, he documented Berlin, Moscow, Paris, Prague, and Lisbon with a style that detaches itself from realism. Today, his obsession is concentrated around the American myth via different approaches and techniques. Galerie Folia in Paris is currently exhibiting his work under the title Urban Jungle. The images illustrate the urban landscapes of an America both in a grid and in perpetual construction.
The series LA Smoke & Mirrors, LA Chromos and now Harbor City all handle symbols and collective memory. “I’ve lived in Los Angeles since 2002,” explains Guillaume Zuili. “A megalopolis that I photograph everyday that never ceases to amaze me. It’s not one entity, but several cities glued end to end as it expands horizontally. Crisscrossed by hundreds of kilometers of freeways, so many worlds coexist without mixing. I always photographed these different universes with my obsession of signs and traces. An urban and industrial cacophony where everything mixes together. These antiquated signs of a Walker Evans America that are still there. These freeways, forever and always… and this van, coming from far-off Wyoming, rusted and gasping for breath, finishing its journey towards this magical, fantastic West.”
Chantal Nedjib
In 2010, Chantal Nedjib created the PR agency L’image par l’image which advises companies for their photography. A communications professional, she created the HSBC Prize for Photography in 1995, and has accompanied it for 15 years. She is still part of its jury and also the one of the Camera Clara Prize.
Guillaume Zuili, Urban Jungle
From January 19 through March 17, 2018
Galerie Folia
13 rue de l’Abbaye
75006 Paris
France
