This year sees the fifth PHOTOQUAI biannual outdoor photography exhibition in Paris. Frank Kalero, the festival’s artistic director, and a team from the Quai Branly Museum have selected “We are Family” as its theme.
However, “We are Family” should be interpreted in a broader – indeed global – sense of community rather than the traditional nuclear family.
Forty photographers have been selected by six exhibition curators and the artistic director, with subjects ranging from the intimate to the ecological, sociological, cultural and historical. This diversity is further enhanced by the different nationalities of the selected artists and provides an open gateway from where visitors – and passers-by – can embark on a journey.
This is not an exhibition that forces us to question and/or share a vision of the world where we “become family”, but it is certainly bright enough to cheer up the grey Parisian skies and is somewhere to go – with the family!
Attempting to encompass the whole world without losing focus is no easy task and it is even more difficult to find a shared meaning or a common thread where these different subjects converge. We end up with a kind of outline , like an aerial view of the earth’s surface.
The exhibition is harmoniously staged and well thought out, with the red colour well distributed. It benefits from a prime location along the Seine with the Eiffel Tower in the background. You can wander into the two open “passageways”, go back out and enter again when you feel like it. Everything is nicely done, it’s free and open to all, day and night – even if you just want to take shelter from the rain!
We might regret that the Biennale doesn’t showcase any emerging talent but everything has been done to make sure that this, the fifth outing of PHOTOQUAI, appeals to the widest possible audience, which is ultimately the goal of this kind of “accessible”, general public event.
FESTIVAL
5th Edition of PhotoQuai
Until November 22nd, 2015
In Front of Quai Branly Museum
37 quai Branly
75007 Paris
France
http://www.photoquai.fr
