From his balcony at 24 Rue Beaubourg in Paris, Marc Petitjean watched his neighbourhood give birth to the Pompidou Centre. Since 1972, he had been photographing the disappearance of the humble alleyways loaded with history and the springing up of a magnificent art and culture tool. Forty years after shattering the urban landscape of the time more than any other monumental construction , this is a monument that has imposed a successful heart transplant to whose rhythm the neighbourhood has adapted.
His visual testimony is affirmed in the direct simplicity of the experience up to 1985, wether it was a matter of confronting the antagonistic building or being tamed by it, of following from high-up passers-by, vehicles, workers on the building site, or, in 1975, to accompany the Conical Intersection by Gordon Matta-Clarke. His views from his window document the splendid transformation of a neighbourhood in the history of Paris.
The gallery owner Michèle Chomette wasn’t yet at 24 Rue Beaubourg on January 31st 1977, but was already navigating the surprisingly clear and deserted waters of photography, drifting with the currents she generated and free to land on islands still unknown to most people. It was the moment when Marc Petitjean left on April 1st1985 that she took over this address. And with it, her guardianship of the neighbourhood where photography, first introduced via the service door, would flourish as time went by.
Marc Petitjean, photographies 1972-1985
1st February to 4th March 2017
Galerie Michèle Chomette
24 rue Beaubourg
75003 Paris
France
