The Guiana Photographic Encounters, an event set to run from the 5th to the 29th of November 2015, will take the theme UNIFOCALES this year. This is the fourth festival of its kind and it has decided to focus on a local photographer Ivan Coupra, better known as Vano. It takes a look back over a 30-years long career with exhibitions at four different venues in Cayenne. Vano’s photographs form an essential body of work illustrating one part of Guianese Creole history.
He started out in development then became a photography assistant in Cayenne. Later, however, the young Vano left for mainland France where he entered the EFET school of photography in Paris. He enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, guitar in hand, in the south of France with a bunch of friends before returning to Guiana in the late 1970s. There he opened a studio which would be frequented by leading figures on the Cayenne scene for almost 10 years. What remains is a wonderful collection of black-and-white portraits, copies of which are sure to be found in many a Cayenne household. He then enjoyed a successful freelance career for the local newspaper but above all, he became the official photographer of Elie Castor, his cousin , a politician who he followed to official meetings across the world. Between trips, he captured moments of everyday Creole life taking a humanistic approach, depicting the changes occurring in this part of the world. He continued taking pictures until the middle of the 1990s when the arrival of digital technology and health problems put a brake on his production.
Artistic director Karl Joseph and his staff are concerned with conserving and promoting work, and determined to spotlight a unique photographic heritage by curating images of the region’s culture. It was therefore only natural that this year’s festival features this “home-grown” view, explains festival co-director Muriel Guaveïa. It is an opportunity to reach out to local visitors and reconcile them with certain images of their territory, which they too often see associated with its past as a former colony, a destination for gold prospectors or a penal labour camp. These are images of the everyday that they can reclaim, including shots taken on the banks of a river, images of festivals, street scenes, and Vano’s famous studio portraits.
The exhibition required a considerable amount of careful curating and archiving. In the equatorial climate, storage conditions are far from ideal and barely half of the negatives handed over by the photographer could be scanned and used. Some 18,000 negatives were thus sorted out and now form an extensive set of the region’s photographic collection.
To raise the Guianan population’s awareness of photography, the Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane event also includes educational workshops, competitions and conferences in the academic institutions.
UNIFOCALES will take place every two years and will showcase the work of a unique artist. The festival will also feature the images of a photographer invited in previous years. This year, the work of Dominique Darbois, exhibitied in 2013, will be on show at Lycée Rémire-Montjoly.
FESTIVAL
UNIFOCALES
From 5 to 29 November 2015
Vano, résonances guyanaises. Années 70, 80, 90
L’EnCRe – Route de Montabo, Cayenne
Vano : lumière studio
Volet extérieur – SKATE PARK – Route de Montabo, Cayenne
Volet intérieur – Université de Guyane, Espace Culturel , Cayenne
Vano : détails d’une Guyane en changement
Guyane 1ère – Boulevard du docteur Lama, Rémire-Montjoly
Wayanas by Dominique Darbois
Lycée Lama-Prévôt , Rémire-Montjoly
www.rencontresphotographiquesdeguyane.com
