Paris : Benjamin Hoffman, Testament Manouche

L’Oiseau, a new exhibition space in Paris, opened its doors in September 2015 with the ambition to show challenging photography, in motion.  The inaugural exhibition presented the personal collection of Jean-François Leroy, Director of the Visa pour l’Image festival in Perpignan.  For this seventh exhibition, L’Oiseau chose the work of Benjamin Hoffman on the daily life of young gypsies.

Meeting today’s gypsy youth.

When culture disappears, people disappear.

“Testament Manouche” (“Gypsy Testament”) is a dive into the world of adolescents and young adults from the gypsy community.  In becoming sedentary, abandoning their language, and adopting the customs of a modern urban life, the new connected generation is confronting older generations who do not understand this world in constant mutation.  What is the future of these French citizens, of their culture?  Will the Gypsies disappear? Testament Manouche brings the history of today’s French Romany to light and helps us better understand this long and painful assimilation process that, little by little, equalizing cultural specificities, subjects minorities to a globalized, uniform model.

EXHIBITION
Testament Manouche
Benjamin Hoffman
From may 12th to june 11th 2016
L’Oiseau
25 rue Beautreillis
75004 Paris
France
[email protected]
http://loiseauparis.com

BOOK
Testament Manouche
Benjamin Hoffman & Louis de Gouyon Matignon
Editions de Juillet
ISBN 978-2-36510-047-2
http://www.editionsdejuillet.com