Since March 2015, the director of the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, Tatyana Franck said upon her arrival that she would showcase the collections of her institution. It’s a diverse fund, without a precise identity, but which holds significant historical sets. Duly noted: Tatyana Franck’s first exhibition as curator draws on the museum’s reserves, in particular from the section holding its oldest pieces. However, she does not line them on the walls as trophies. “The Memory of the Future” instigates a dialogue between the first photographic methods and the artists of today who pull from the same archaic techniques.
That is how daguerrotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cyanotypes from a century or more ago are juxtaposed with contemporary images achieved with photochemistry savants. A wax paper by Gustave Le Gray (1855) alongside those of Martin Becka. A cyanotype by Anna Atkins (around 1852) exchanges its blues with those of Christian Marclay and John Dugdale. Daguerrotypes by Jean-Gariel Eynard (1840s) glow like those of Takashi Arai and Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand. Recent images made with a camera obscura are also included. And a portrait by Dennis Gabor, the inventor of the holographic process, is not far from a work by James Turrell.
Put together with care, the exhibition has an educational interest. It familiarizes us with the premises of photography that was not yet called “analog”. It also offers reflections on the attribute of the medium, like its ability to freeze duration or feed memory. Oscar Munoz and Jean Foncuberta excel in the poetic exploration of these ontologies, even if it means denying them.
But the intention of “The Memory of the Future” is clearly aesthetic. It’s a seductive exhibition, based on the powerful current nostalgia, matter ,the tangible. A reactive tendency, sort of a backlash of impalpable digital combinations, like those which are played out in this outdated momentum by offering vintage filters in photo applications on smartphones. Many images in the exhibition capitalize on this want for patina, cracking, trace, often pleasing themselves in a superficial manner.
The exhibition ends with a demonstration of a 3D digitalization project of the Musée de l’Elysée’s collections. Put together by a start-up from l’Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, these replicas on touch screens lets one examine or orient themselves by an old daguerrotype and or a collage of René Burri. Spectacular, but also indicative of the contemporary technophile. Except for maybe a reflective copper plate or photographic cutting, what’s the point of adding a third dimension to the analysis of photography, two-dimensional par excellence? Of course, mistakes are always allowed to be made.
EXHIBITION
«La mémoire du futur, dialogues photographiques entre passé, présent et futur »
Until August 28th, 2016.
Musée de l’Élysée
18 avenue de l’Élysée
1014 Lausanne
Switzerland
