“My work for fifty years has focused on showing the industrial life, work, working culture. How changes in production conditions impacted the lives of workers, residents and the image of the city.” This is the credo and tireless practice of Jean-Louis Schoellkopf – born in Colmar in 1946 – who, for more than half a century, has been plowing the same furrow and giving the documentary style its credentials.
Although he was tempted by reporting in his youth, he quickly perceived its limits and set out to develop a practice and reflection centered on portraits in the broad sense. Returning from Canada, it was in Saint-Étienne, where he photographed the mine and the steel industry as well as the inhabitants in their interiors, that he began to analyze the consequences of the end of the industrial era on the daily lives of workers but also on the urban landscape. The mines in Liévin and Grand Hornu, metallurgy in Hayange, weaving in Louviers, chemistry in Ludwigshafen, but also Genoa, the Alexanderpolder district of Rotterdam, Stuttgart, Barcelona, the 13th and 19th arrondissements of Paris, Lille-Roubaix – The territory of Tourcoing, so many areas of investigation, experimentation and project development.
Based in Mulhouse, he logically continued this work in the clear documentary vein which is his and which he is one of the first to have perceived, affirmed and defended as an artistic practice. Portraits of workers, therefore, generally frontal but also and with complete freedom portraits of the inhabitants who pose in front of the white sheet of a mobile studio installed in the open air on the square in front of La Fonderie. We also find other modalities, more distanced and at the same time more poetic to evoke a working culture with photographs of unpretentious bouquets, simply beautiful and natural and in still lifes of food which, with a nod to the classic painting but totally understated, frame fresh produce always bought at the market and always consumed after the photo is taken. Soberly squared, the series on “bunkers” questions the brutality of certain buildings and, beyond that, a conception of the city and urban planning in which the individual is ignored or in any case neglected. We also see here how Jean-Louis Schoellkopf conceives photography as a tool for critical analysis and how his work, over time, is truly committed.
Working with large and medium format cameras to obtain clear images, free of any romanticism, Jean-Louis Schoellkopf installs, in series, typologies which allow us to approach and read little-valued areas – among other things through the photography – of our contemporary world. No sentimentality, but a direct confrontation with the world and a revelation of whole areas often in the process of changing, or even disappearing.
The simple presentation, , avoiding framing effects, shows the print as essential in its materiality and in its artisanal dimension. This takes on an even stronger meaning in the era of dominant and standardizing digital technology.
For this exhibition, certain images have been printed so visitors can choose and take with them a trace of this generous and demanding work.
Christian Caujolle, curator of the exhibition
Exhibition as part of Regionale 24.
Jean-Louis Schoellkopf
Until February 25, 2024
La Filature, Scène nationale de Mulhouse
20 Nathan Katz Lane
68100 Mulhouse
www.lafilature.org
Artist’s website www.schoellkopf.fr
