Notes from the field.

A Month of Photography in Paris.

Every other November since 1984, Paris becomes a hub for the photographic world, this for a duration of a month or two. Le Mois de la Photo, an event supervised and organized by the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie and his director Jean-Luc Monterosso, federates public institutions (the MEP is financed by the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture), museums (also financed by public funds in their vast majority), international cultural centers, and private galleries around a particular theme. 2004 is seeing Le Mois de la Photo spread its wings into a European festival with a collaboration between the cities of Berlin, Vienna and "the City of Lights" under a title: Histoire, histoires (History, Stories), a concept that has already made its way to PhotoEspana last Spring (Historias). In 2006, three more European cities, Bratislava, Moscow, and Rome will join a formula that has been emulated by many other venues around the world (whereas Photo London will open its doors on May 19, 2005, organized by Pluk magazine). From a thematic perspective, this 2004 Mois de la Photo was strongly rooted in the history of the medium and many exhibitions drew from the photographic heritage of the nineteenth century. Key-photographers of the twentieth century whose works have been seminal were also represented in several locations, two of them being the new Jeu de Paume, on the place de la Concorde and the Cartier Foundation.

With such exhibitions as Jules Marey's studies of air and fluids, and Stieglitz at Orsay, the Bechers at Beaubourg, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Societe Francaise de Photographie and nineteenth century photographs of ectoplasms and other spirits at the MEP, 1841-1941 A Centry of Italian Photography at the Pavillon des Arts, Le Mois de la Photo 2004 has been definitely more oriented toward history than stories/narratives. A few venues illustrate contemporary photographic creation at its most recent. First, L'Ombre du Temps, a survey at the new Jeu de Paume (Centre national de la Photographie) that was inspired by and meant to be a response to Cruel and Tender at the Tate Gallery in London last year. This tentative survey of creative and exploratory photography in the twentieth century tried to counter-balance the obvious Anglo-Saxon bias of the British show, largely inspired by Modernist premises established by a group of curators in the post-WW II era led by John Szarkowski at MoMA. The show at the Tate though did not have Szarkowski's encompassing and unifying vision. It comprised 23 photographers (12 Americans, 7 Germans, 2 Brits, 1 Dutch photographer, and 1 Ukranian), as if photography south east of the Channel did not exist. Insularity has its drawbacks! Just like Cruel and Tender, L'Ombre du Temps was accompanied by a catalogue and justifying essays. The title of both the exhibition and the catalogue were clearly a respectful homage to Jean-Claude Lemagny whose work for decades at the Bibliotheque Nationale has established canons in the field with its careful approach and understanding of the medium as illustrated in his book, L'ombre et le temps (Paris: Nathan, 1992). Lemagny had previuosly published La Photo creatrice in 1984, published by Contrejour. The introduction to L'ombre du temps was obviously written by Regis Durand, the director of the Centre National de la Photographie and was interestingly followed by an essay by Michel Poivert, editor, among other things, of Etudes Photographiques, the quarterly magazine published by the Societe Francaise de Photographie celebrating its 150th anniversary (the November issue of the magazine, (#) 15, has one interesting essay on the Abu Ghraib photographs by Andre Gunther, and one of historical value on the VIVA agency by Aurore Deligny). Both texts are also translated into English at the end of the catalogue. It must be said that the exhibition made more sense in its edited book version than in its hanging version. The confusion may have risen from the hiatus between the ambition of the goals and the limitations of the space. Another climax of "photo November in Paris" was the Cartier Foundation with Sugimoto and Depardon's latest works, and last but not least Paris Photo, Paris annual international photographic fair held at the Carrousel du Louvre.

This year the Mois de la Photo coincided with the annual fair of fine-art photography dealers and galleries, Paris Photo, held at the Carrousel du Louvre. This annual manifestation created by Rik Gadella in 1997 attracted over 40,000 visitors far more than its equivalents in New York (AIPAD whose crowd was estimated at 12,000 on 2004 or the new Photo New York that gathered a few thousand people which constituted an encouraging start in spite of its possible redundancy, in the mind of the public, with AIPAD). Following a formula that has been defined by AIPAD and many photo festivals, Paris Photo proposed numerous events over the course of one long photo-saturated week-end (Nov. 11-14). After Germany, Holland, and Mexico, Switzerland was the 2004 guest country that was offered a whole wing dedicated to its galleries and museums-the Winthertur Photo-museum had a whole room to display a selection of its holdings under the title Cold Play-Set 1 (can we see again traces of that controversial Tate gallery show here?). This show is meant to be the first of an annual series curated by the museum from its holdings. As illustrated in Paris, what seems to differentiate European venues from their American counterparts is the support (although shrinking) of public funding to art, and more precisely here, photo festivals. The catalogue of Paris Photo opened with a statement by Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres, the current minister of Culture and Communication. Another clue of such practices is the effort of the North-Rhine / Westphalia region in Germany that sponsored ten of its galleries and even published a catalogue introducing them especially for the event. On top of various book-signings, which made sure that image-makers would also be around (and many came), and panel discussions (some more successful than others), one of the key events at Paris Photo this year was the first (eminently visible at the Carrousel du Louvre) BMW award. 68 individual works by 68 living photographers had been selected. 35 were on display in a special gallery. The jury was composed of Didier Maitret, president of BMW France, Rik Gadella, Paris Photo's artistic director; Octave Manset, communications director for BMW France, Martin Parr; collector Sylvio Perlstein, Richard Schlagman, c.e.o. of Phaidon Press, and Thomas Seelig, chief curator at the Fotomuseum Winterthur. The winner of the 12,000 2 prize (close to $14,000 these days) was announced on Nov. 12: Jules Spinatsch (from the Ausstellunsgraum25 gallery in Zurich) for his piece Snow Management, 2004, a large deserted, almost abstract color landscape in the post-Becher/Dusseldorf school tradition.

The Centre Photographique d'Ile de France is located on the eastern outskirts of Paris and has been quite active under his rather young director, Sylvain Lizon. On November 15 and 16 the Center hosted a national conference on the theme of "Le document a l'oeuvre", an ambiguous title that could be understood as "Documents at Work" or "From Document to Work of Art." These two days were co-sponsored by the National Centre of Photography, Beaubourg, the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry of Education. The attendance was a confluence of educators, artists, and administrators from cultural institutions (a public service there). Both mornings were dedicated to presentations investigating the hybrid status of images as a key component of contemporary art and education. The afternoons were split between workshops allowing artists to share their experiences in the public realm, the expectations of their commissioners, and the responses of their audiences. Public/political art, where do the differences lie if any? How can art be successfully used as a tool for the re-appropriation of public and private spaces? What can the social role of the artist be in the public sphere? To conclude the participants could choose between the visits of two exhibitions. I chose to visit of the Centre Photographique d'Ile de France and see its exhibition "Temoins d'histoires" (another play on words, "histoire" meaning both history and story in French) that reiterated the dominant theme of 2004 in the photographic world, from Thomas Struth, to Luc Delahaye, Simon Norfolk, Paul Seawright, Joel Sternfeld, Mitch Epstein, Larry Sultan, or even the Bechers and their overwhelming retrospective at Beaubourg: "History/Stories," how art can emerge from document and documents become art. The recent rise in furious sounds coming from the world have compelled some artists to pay their tribute to history whereas the evolution of the market of documentary images, and their distribution has forced reporters to seek other venues for their production in order to keep an audience.

If Europe sounds rather reluctant to wage war these days, its focus seems to be invested in social issues that extend beyond the future of social security, health coverage, and work compensation in an aging population, into education and the arts. Could we see there an asserted resistance to the negative aspects of certain attempts of economical and cultural globalization whose heavy-handed homogenizing tendencies raise more resentment than collaboration?