Zoème exhibits the work of André Mérian with the exhibition 1984-1987, Portraits Pont-Aven.
In 1984, André Mérian settled as a photographer in Pont-Aven, Brittany. In the Aven workshop, he produced identity pictures and commissioned portraits. The protocol was always the same: the model posed in front of a neutral background and photographed in medium format in natural light. Little by little the idea arose of diverting these commissioned images to make them the basis of black and white portrait work. At the same time, André Mérian began to ask friends, acquaintances or even people he met in the streets of Pont-Aven to come and pose, sometimes in pairs, in his workshop. The photographer’s challenge was twofold: capturing the singularity of the models, with their gaze as the focal point of each image; and realising through hairstyles, clothes and accessories, a sort of hollow portrait of Pont-Aven in the 1980s. This work continued for three years. Some of these portraits were shown in 1986 in Pont-Aven as part of an exhibition entitled Port-Aven au portrait, but they have not been shown elsewhere since. In 2023, André Mérian decided to revisit his archives, and a good number of unpublished portraits were then added to those which had been exhibited in 1986.
Since the beginning of the 1980s, André Mérian has devoted himself to photography. From 1984 to 1987 he moved to Pont Aven where he produced black and white portraits in his daylight studio. At the end of 1987, he moved to the far south in Marseille where he began to take an interest in landscapes, and later in particular in the peri-urban landscape. His photographs are documentary or fabricated, the banality, the derisory, the common question us about representation. He exhibits regularly in France and abroad, and his photographs are part of various public and private collections. Latest books published: Occasions (La factory du signe, 2019), Never mind (Zoème, 2017), Waterfront (Arnaud Bizalion publisher, 2013), Ouest (Filigranes, 2013).
André Mérian : 1984-1987, Portraits Pont-Aven
From April 4 to June 1, 2024
Zoème
Galerie | Librairie | Maison D’edition
8, rue Vian
13006 Marseille
www.zoeme.net
