Marc Lathuillère’s France is like the portraits of the French men and women he took during his travels across the country: fixed, rigid, impersonal, proper, like the masks he asks them to wear. The portraits raise questions about patrimony and its relationship to “places of memory.”
Journalist, artist and photographer, Lathuillère spent nearly ten years roaming the country, a mask in one hand and a camera in the other. The series Musée national will be published by Editions Lamartinière, and two exhibitions are being held as part of the European Month of Photography.
At first glance, the story told through Lathuillère’s photographs seems like a happy one. It could almost be a fairy tale. By the seaside or in the country, these “postcard” portraits are like frozen moments in time. With the sun at its peak, the sky blue, the grass green and the sea nice and salty, it would be nice indeed to live in this vision of France. Even the mask the photographer has his subjects wear has something playful about it. It makes one think of that board game we loved when we were kids. That funny character with large glasses and bushy mustache: who could it be?
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
BOOK
Musée National
Photographs by Marc Lathuillière
Foreword Michel Houellebecq
October 2014
Publisher La Martinière
285 x 245
216 pages
EXHIBITIONS
Marc Lathuillière – Musée National
November 6th – December 20th 2014
Galerie Binôme
19 rue Charlemagne
75004 Paris
www.galeriebinome.com
Michel Houellebecq – Before Landing, Le Produit France
Curator Marc Lathuillière
November 12th 2014 – January 31st 2015
Pavillon Carré de Baudouin
121 rue de Ménilmontant
75020 Paris
www.carredebaudouin.fr
