“Résonances? Postwar Photography at The Jeu de Paume

Thursday, 17 January 2008 21:30

PARIS, FRANCE - The Jeu de Paume is inaugurating a new cycle of exhibitions offering a new way of approaching the history of photography. Drawing on the collections of the Médiathèque de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, the “Résonances” cycle will show these remarkable collections in a new light by exhibiting them alongside to works from “guest” collections from around the world. The idea is also to diversify approaches to the history of photography and explore its creative processes and their genesis.

“Résonances I. Photographier après la guerre. France-Allemagne, 1945-1955” compares the collections of the Médiathèque de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine with those of the prestigious Museum Folkwang in Essen. Ute Eskildsen, curator of the photography department in Essen, and Marta Gili, director of the Jeu de Paume, will use these collections to carry out a comparative reading of the photographic work being done in France and Germany during the postwar decade. The show provides an opportunity to observe “two key European countries whose social, political and psychological convergences and divergences during the baleful postwar period are essential to an understanding of contemporary Europe.” In addition to numerous photographs from the two collections, this exhibition at the Jeu de Paume also presents all the period documents (catalogue dummies, contact sheets, handwritten letters) bearing witness to the photographers' work and the origin of their images.

Featured artists: Photographers from the collection of the Médiathèque de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine: Noël Le Boyer (1883-1967), Marcel Bovis (1904-1997), Denise Colomb (1902-2004), Roger Corbeau (1908-1995), René-Jacques (1908-2003), and Thérèse Le Prat (1895-1966). Photographers from the collection of the Museum Folkwang: Chargesheimer (1924-1972), Heinz Hajek-Halke (1898-1983), Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990), Kurt Julius (1909-1986), Peter Keetman (1916-2005), Willi Moegle (1897-1989), Hilmar Pabel (1910-2000), Wolfgang Reisewitz (born 1917), August Sander (1876-1964), and Otto Steinert (1915-1978).
 
By opening itself to dialogue with photographic collections and archives from around the world, the Jeu de Paume aims to promote critical knowledgeof the complex, shared history of our sometimes stormy, sometimes naive response to the photographic image.

For the first instalment in the series, the Jeu de Paume asked Ute Eskildsen, curator of the Photography Collection at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, to conceive a project for collaboration between that legendary German collection and the Parisian Médiathèque.
 
Visit The Jeu de Paume at : www.jeudepaume.org/