This 3rd edition of the Usimages Biennial focuses on exploring the relationship between photography and corporate assignment. It also raises the question of being able to testify or not today of the realities of the working world. The programming is intended to be a research space that questions in the historical and contemporary exhibitions the relationship of the artists to the industrial assignment. In a world that is accelerating the production and transmission of images, it is surprising to see the difficulty in exercising an independant and free look within the companies. Although issues of security or process secrecy 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: the tense flow of consumerism from one end of the chain to the other. consumer and the robot that will prepare the order.
Often sponsored, photographers are sometimes invited to freely exercise their eyes at the heart of the company. This was the case in 1987, when on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, the Colgate-Palmolive factory of Compiègne opened its doors to four photographers, Gilbert Fastenaekens, Thierry Girard, Richard Kalvar and John Vink, so that they cross their ways of looking at the company. These images were then collected in the book The Factory.
Usimages, un parcours photographique à travers notre territoire
From Saturday, April 27 to Saturday, June 15, 2019
Communes de Cramoisy, Creil, Montataire, Nogent-sur-Oise, Rousseloy, Saint-Leu-d’Esserent, Saint-Maximin et Villers-Saint-Paul
