France: Sebastião Salgado Amazônia

 

© Sebastiao Salgado

May 20 - October 31, 2021

For seven years, Sebastião Salgado immersed himself in far corners of the Brazilian Amazon, photographing the forest, rivers and mountains, and the people who live there. On his journeys deep into this realm—where the immense power of nature can be felt as in few places on earth—his photographer’s eye captured striking images, most being shown here to the public for the first time.

Accompanied by an original soundtrack—a ‘symphony-world’ created by Jean-Michel Jarre using concrete sounds from the forest—the exhibition also gives voice to the indigenous communities photographed, via their testimonies.

 

A photographic journey 

Following from his Genesis project, a photographic ode to the majestic beauty of the most remote regions of the world, Salgado embarked on a new series of expeditions to capture the incredible natural diversity of the Brazilian rainforest, and the ways of life of its inhabitants. Staying in remote villages for several weeks at a time, he was able to photograph ten ethic groups. Taken from small watercraft or from the air, Salgado’s images reveal the complex maze of tributaries that twist their way into the river, mountains reaching heights of 3 000 metres, and the skies so thick with moisture that there are rivers in the air.

A symphony-world 

The exhibition highlights not only the fragility of this ecosystem, but also the rich natural soundtrack of the Amazon, placing in dialogue Salgado’s arresting photos and a new musical composition by Jean-Michel Jarre, created specially for the exhibition using concrete sounds from the forest. The rustling of trees, animal calls, birdsong, the roar of water tumbling from mountain peaks, etc. collected in situ, in the rainforest, form a stunningly apt audio landscape to accompany Salgado’s journey. 

An inestimable heritage

Featuring 200 photographs, along with giant projections—scaled to the immensity of a natural realm like no other—the exhibition shines a spotlight on the fragility of the Amazonian ecosystem. It seeks to show that in the areas inhabited by indigenous groups, the ancestral guardians of these lands, the forest remains almost entirely undamaged. Documentary films allow visitors to hear from the people who live in the forest, in their own voices, and to gain a sense of their rich cultures. Through these powerful images, Sebastião and Lélia Salgado hope to prompt the thinking and actions urgently needed to protect this inestimable heritage of humanity.

Curator and scenographer: Lélia Wanick-Salgado 

Original musical soundtrack for the exhibition: Jean-Michel Jarre 

Exhibition in collaboration with the Geneva Ethnography Museum

 

More information: HERE

UK: Once A Year: Homer Sykes

 Lucy Bell Gallery is happy to be  re-opening on 3rd May with an exhibition of photographs of British Folklore Customs and Traditions by Homer Sykes.

Homer Sykes (b.1949)  is a celebrated British documentary photographer whose work has been widely exhibited including at The Tate, The Arnolfini and The V&A. His career includes long term personal projects, many based on the customs and traditions of the British. Homer’s early interest in photography started at school and in 1967 he went to  study at The London College of Printing.

In the early 1970's Homer started his research into documenting traditional British folklore customs and annual events, which has become the largest long-term project of his career. Homers’ unique survey on British customs is an iconic series which contrasts age old traditions with the modernity of  every day life.

“Rather than dealing in the perhaps easy absurdity of these events, Sykes’ images work to situate these customs within the everyday - the strange becomes everyday rather than the more travelled inversion of the everyday becoming strange. One striking example of this can be found in his images of The Burry Man. In this custom, carried out in South Queensferry, Lothian, a resident is dressed in a woollen suit which is then entirely covered in burrs, the effect is one of creating a hybrid of man and cactus, The Burry Man then walks the boundaries of the town, calling at all the pubs along the way. Sykes’ photographs serve to situate these events firmly with the register of the ordinary as he shows this creature seated on a bar stool,drinking his whisky through a straw, and walking down a cold, wet tarmac road with a little kid in wellies." RuralModernity, Everyday Life and Visual Culture, by Dr Rosemary Shirley. Published by Ashgate 2014.

 "My pictures are about people, what they wear, how they look, how they interact with each other, against a background that sets the scene.".

Once a Year, Some Traditional British Customs  was published in 1977 by Gordon Fraser.

In 2016 Dewi Lewis Publishing re-published this volume with over 50 'new' images from Homer’s Archive signed copies, will be for sale at the gallery during the exhibition.

At Lucy Bell Gallery: 3 May, 2021 - 26 June, 2021

46 Norman Road
St Leonards on Sea
East Sussex, TN38 0EJ

More information: HERE

Paris: Philippe Chancel & Gary Green : Rebels & Dandys

The spring 2021 exhibition at Galerie Miranda brings together two historical and littleknown
bodies of photography that capture urban underground culture in Paris and New York in the late seventies
and early eighties.

 

 
At the time, Gary Green (b. 1956, USA) and Philippe Chancel (b. 1959, France) were both young photographers, in their first jobs and finding their footing as adults and as artists. Each of their series bears witness to the energy and spontaneity of youth - that of the artists, but also of the urban underground movements they were documenting.

In 1982, Paris, Philippe Chancel photographed the city's rockabilly gangs composed largely of teenagers from immigrant families who sought the freedom and social integration represented by the music and clothes of postwar American pop culture, that they adapted in a kind of Parisian West Side Story.
Paradoxically, at the same time on the other side of the Atlantic, New York was plunging into deep social,
economic and urban crises that were being questioned in real time by the city's underground artists and
musicians, who Gary Green photographed for nearly a decade. This 'tale of two cities' recounts two creative, youthful movements fuelled by music and dance - as well as violence and drugs - that were profoundly different in their composition and aspirations, whilst sharing an innate and vital resistance to crushing external forces.

The Paris photos are particularly striking in their representation of second-generation immigrant kids drinking, dancing, kissing and fighting alongside their white middle class friends, scenes that are unthinkable in Paris today where these same social groups have been structurally and economically separated after decades of political disengagement, symbolized largely by the ghettoisation of Paris' poor outer suburbs, or 'banlieues'.

The New York series is a raw document of the many famous but also unfamous people who forged the artistic and punk scene of the times.

For both series, the gallery has chosen to highlight the iconic figures of each movement but also the women - famous and anonymous - who played an essential role in each 'scene', whether as musicians, dancing partners, kissing partners, style icons, muses, 'door bitches' or barmaids.

More information on the exhibition: HERE

 

Galerie Miranda  

21 rue du Château d’Eau

Paris, 75010