“In the 1930s, Brassaï, not yet a photographer, but already a compulsive « stroller », observes and takes notes on the traces of a society in complete mutation, the dark corners of which he loves to explore. « He tracked down plots of wasteland, favourite places for lovers and children, leaving the signs of their love and their games on the walls; he observed buildings being demolished, in search of the limbo of lives abandoned by their former occupants, following with curiosity the blackened flues of chimneys, but above all, like a butterfly catcher for whom the quest for a fragile and fleeting life remains just as much a scientific principle as a philosophical one, he would flush out Parisian graffiti for almost 40 years. ” – Agnès de Gouvion Saint-Cyr
For more than 20 years, he collects dozens of images for which he quickly designs a very precise classification system with a determined order and denomination: propositions from the wall, the wall’s language, the birth of man, masks and faces, animals, love, death, magic, primitive images.
The similarities in the framing, in the classification and recording system, of the strolling as a method, between Jacques Villeglé, the Anonymous Tear, and Brassaï, are so evident that the galery Vallois decided to organize an exhibition with the works of the two photographers.
EXHIBITION
Jacques Villeglé: Graffiti Politiques
Brassaï: Graffitis
June 6 – July 19 2014
Galerie Vallois
36 rue de Seine
75006 Paris
France
