At the Signatures gallery, Arno Brignon’s “Us” series invites us on a family road trip across the United States, from city to city, each bearing the name of European capitals. He shapes his own territory in an intimate fiction that resonates with our sensitive, historical and colonial, photographic or fantasized memory.
“Us” is a family journey between 2018 and 2022 through the twelve eponymous cities of historic European capitals, nestled in the heart of America. This symbolic road trip seeks to decipher a society imbued with post-democratic scents, at a time when populism and technocracy seem to confront each other across the West. Observing this country, forged by European settlers who ousted the natives, is like looking at ourselves, so powerful are our ties, uniting our states for better and for worse. Along this route, Robert Frank, Jack London, or Wim Wenders appear, but beyond the initiatory aspect, Arno Brigon narrates this country through the prism of personal reminiscences, with the nagging question of absence in suspense.
“Us” is a series produced during three trips between 2018 and 2022 with the support of the Brouillon d’une imagefixe (SCAM) grant and aid to documentary photography (CNAP).
From his experience as an educator in the neighborhoods of Toulouse, Arno Brignon (1976), retains an appetite for work constructed in a collaborative manner, often within the framework of workshop and residency projects. As these participatory projects progress, the practice of portraiture becomes one of the places to recreate, with the inhabitants, the memory of the place. In Valparaiso, he uses the calotype process to express the alteration of memories and the disappearance of social bonds. Gradually, the photographer moves towards an assumed dreaminess, embracing chance, looking for an accident. His use of expired silver films, products of a past industry, entrusts his photographic act to the erosion of the film, leaving room for the work of time.
Raphaëlle Stopin
Arno Brignon : “Us”
from May 31 to June 15, 2023
Signatures
70 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
75011 Paris
06 17 85 54 39
01 48 07 58 62
www.signatures-photographies.com
An eponymous book accompanies the exhibition
Size: 19 x 23.5 cm
Paperback cover with flaps
Public price: 22 euros
