Before studying art history at the École du Louvre, Christoph Wiesner dreamed of being a photographer under the guidance of two uncles, doing a lot of film photography in his small laboratory.
Today, a few decades later, he details his program for the 53rd edition of the festival, placed under the sign of revelations.
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Miss Figaro. – In this edition, women are in the spotlight…
Christoph Wiesner.
–
There is a part that I called
Performer
and in which we present the Verbund collection, based in Vienna, never shown in France.
The director focused on these women artists who used photography to defend their role in society, their relationship to sexuality.
The exhibition is called
A Feminist Vanguard.
Photography is a means of expression that allows them to get out of the great techniques – painting, sculpture – and find another language.
We find well-known names like Orlan, Cindy Sherman or Helena Almeida, who has a performative dimension in her work.
In video, the intern at Paris Photo
So the performance is very present?
This is one of the things that interest me, performance up to dance.
We find this in Babette Mangolte's exhibition,
Capter le mouvement dans l'espace,
a figure known in France by a small group of aficionados close to the American scene - Bob Wilson, Lucinda Childs, Philip Glass -, and who participates of this reflection: “How do you document a moving body?”
We find this axis with Noémie Goudal, who does a performance with Maëlle Poésy in Avignon… She also does a
Phoenix
exhibition
in Arles.
His subject has to do with the history of the planet, the Anthropocene.
She recreates landscapes that do not exist, a forest emerging from the water.
In this interest for nature, there are approaches linked to ethnology, anthropology.
In the
Revisit
part , I was keen to have a strong female figure
Christoph Wiesner
In the
Revisit section,
do you continue your re-reading of history?
I was keen to have a strong female figure.
Lee Miller is iconic.
Beyond her muse side of Man Ray and her links with surrealism, we were interested in her career from 1932 to 1945, fashion, studio and then war photographer.
This edition pays tribute to Olivier Etcheverry, historical scenographer of Arles…
It is dedicated to him.
He revolutionized the way of presenting photography by bringing to it the concept of architecture and the idea of coloring the walls.
He created a dynamic for telling stories.
What creative support do you have?
In France, there is the Prix Découverte Louis Roederer.
And in India, this year, for the first time, the winner of the scholarship that was created with the Serendipity Festival in Goa is exhibited at the Saint-Trophime cloister.
This allows me to draw a thread with the poster of the festival, a photograph of Mitch Epstein, whose exhibition
In India 1978-1989
is to be found at the Abbey of Montmajour.
He worked as a cinematographer on the films of Mira Nair, director of
Salaam Bombay!
It's a very cinematic poster…
It sheds light on this collaboration with India and bridges the gap between photography and moving images, photography and cinema.
I want to explore this next year and create surprises.
Arles 2022. The Encounters of Photography, from July 4 to September 25.
meetings-arles.com
