The year 2017 opens new horizons for the Lumière des Roses Gallery, which specializes in anonymous photography: it is becoming even more engaged in the dynamics of Grand Paris by expanding its Montreuil location and initiating collaboration with contemporary artists whose work resonates with their vintage photography collection, to be mined by the artists for raw material.
This sums up well the new exhibition entitled, J’aime regarder les filles—or, let’s be frank, “I like peeping under girls’ skirts”—which brings together a selection of photographs exploring, each in its own way, the notion of voyeurism. Using images drawn largely from anonymous and amateur photography—such as the disturbing series from Brighton which, with its Lewis Carrollesque veneer, peeks under the skirts of young bathers in 1890; or the photographic perspective of such contemporary artists as Kōhei Yoshiyuki, Merry Alpern, Olivier Kerven, and L.O.R.—the exhibition plays with the theme of the pleasure of looking when this pleasure crosses over into a grey zone, becomes questionable, implicating the viewer/voyeur that we are and confronting us with questions: where does voyeurism begin? At what point does curiosity become misplaced, obsessive, and perverse? And when does the pleasure of looking reside in the image and when in the eye of the beholder?
J’aime regarder les filles
October 4 to December 9, 2017
Galerie Lumière des Roses
12–14 Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau
93100 Montreuil
France
