This 3rd edition of the Usimages Biennial focuses on exploring the relationship between photography and corporate commission. It also raises the question of being able to testify or not today of the realities of the world of work. The program is intended to be a research space that questions in the historical and contemporary exhibitions the relationship between artists and industrial control. In a world that is accelerating the production and transmission of images, it is surprising to see the difficulty in exercising a free look at companies. Even if security or industrial secret issues often prevent the production of photographs, the company seems to want to keep neither the memory of men, nor that of images. As if this organized amnesia allowed an easier management of the dismantling and the disappearance in the event of a crisis.
The programming revolves around exhibitions of contemporary international photographers who plunge us each in their own way, into the more or less humanized world of companies. This is the case for Michele Borzoni’s images of call centers or logistics centers that push us to imagine what the image does not represent: tense flow consumerism from one end of the chain to the other the consumer and the robot preparering the order.
there is also two commercial reportages that André Kertész realized in 1944 at Firestone and for the American Viscose Corporation. He tried to compose accurate pictures in the room, and pays close attention to the choices of female models he has put to work, in this historic moment when the United States saw the men go to the front.
Usimages, a photographic journey through our territory
From Saturday, April 27 to Saturday, June 15, 2019
Cramoisy, Creil, Montataire, Nogent-sur-Oise, Rousseloy, Saint-Leu-d’Esserent, Saint-Maximin and Villers-Saint-Paul townships
Season André Kertész
Anxious to preserve his memory after his death, André Kertész (1894-1985) undertakes, during the 1970s, the classification of his photographs and his papers. He draws, from his archives, material to publish a dozen books between 1972 and 1985, including Sixty years of Photography (1972), Distortions (1976), From my window (1983) and Hungarian Memories (1983). Recognized photographer, he sees his work exhibited in the largest museums in the world. After long exchanges with representatives of the Ministry of Culture, during frequent stays in Paris in the early 1980s, André Kertész donated his work to France in 1984.
The photographer bequeaths “to the French people”, he says, all his negatives and slides as well as an important set of reading prints by contact and contact sheets. The donation includes, in addition, part of the library and the abundant correspondence of the photographer. It covers his life from his youth in Hungary, from 1907 until his death: books, magazines, newspapers, drafts, book models, notebooks, correspondence and miscellaneous bills, including with his printer, the publishers and museums. The archives, sent to France in July 1986, are entrusted to the French Association for the Diffusion of Photographic Heritage (AFDPP), which organized the exhibition Ma France, presented in Paris in 1990.
Since May 2005, the donation has been assigned to the Médiathèque for Architecture and Heritage (MAP). A first exhibition, The Odyssey of an Icon, is co-produced in Paris with the European House of Photography (MEP) in 2008.
It is also with the assistance of the MAP that is organized the great retrospective of the work of the photographer at the Jeu de Paume in 2010. This awakens the interest of the researchers for Kertész, now well known by specialists but less identified by the general public. Over the years, many images of Kertész, as well as archival documents from the donation are presented in many exhibitions, such as Calder, 1926-1933 at the Center Pompidou in 2009, 1917 in Pompidou-Metz in 2013, or at FOAM in Amsterdam in 2017.
In 2019, five specific projects will allow the public to rediscover the work of André Kertész:
– France from Saint-Cloud, André Kertész and the magazine Art and Medicine (1931-1936), Saint-Cloud (Hauts-de-Seine), museum of Avelines, from February 21 to July 13.
– André Kertész, Commercial Works, Creil (Oise), Usimages 2019 festival, from April 27 to June 15
– André Kertész, The light of Paris, Chengsha, (China), summer 2019 organized by the Jeu de Paume as part of the festival Croisements (under condition)
– André Kertész, Jeu de Paume-Chateau de Tours (Indre-et-Loire), from June 25 to October 27, 2019
– André Kertész, Walking in the picture, Gentilly (Val-de-Marne), House of photography Robert Doisneau, from November 22, 2019 to February 2, 2020.
