The exhibition’s beautiful title could be read as a manifesto. The art historian Michel Frizot shares his personal collection of photographs: 170 pictures whose subjects and photographers are unknown, postcards, press photos, photobooth strips and photo-collages found at flea markets and fairs.
Frizot offers a short history of photography in which the enigma is considered to be the distance that separates reality from the photographer’s vision, and the interpretation then made by the viewer. “This enigma is not the result of an effect, a style, a talent, but inherent to the medium,” writes Frizot. “It results from the distance between human perception and what can be recorded, and the consequent overwhelming of our senses.” A variety of themes can be glimpsed in the photographs dating from the end of the 19th century to the 1970s, a majority of them taken in the first half of the 20th century.
For example, the photographs in the first section capture phenomena that can only be perceived through photography: an explosion of rocks and frozen lava in the shape of a bouquet (1917), a photo taken with a microscope in 1881, one of clouds in 1911, a flock of birds and so on. Then we move on to a more aesthetic approach, as in this crowd scene shot at the Paris Stock Exchange in 1936, or this superb photograph by Almasy taken at the Bic factory around 1960, which shows a silhouette reflected in a window display of the famous pens. Then come the studio photographs, where the photographer and model indulge in all sorts of fantasies: an acrobat, a child appearing in a corner of the set, naked men wrestling, and Jean Cocteau wearing a mask.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
EXHIBITION
Toute photographie fait énigme
Une collecte de regards, conçue et présentée par Michel Frizot
Through 25th January 2014
Maison Européenne de la Photographie
5/7 rue de Fourcy
75004 Paris
