黑料不打烊

Mohamed Bourouissa, Marie Bovo, Christoph Draeger, Rob Hornstra, Saul Leiter, Marion Tampon-Lajariette, Masao Yamamoto Begun in the 1980s, The MEP collection includes almost 20,000 works. Representative of international photography from 1950 to the present, it covers all photographic styles and techniques, and has recently embraced video art. The works are chosen by an acquisitions committee made up of eminent personalities. Outside partner institutions, such as the Fondation Neuflize Vie and the Association des Amis de la MEP, also contribute greatly to the enrichment of the collection. This presentation of a small selection of recent acquisitions is an opportunity for the MEP to share its artistic commitments with the general public and showcase some of its favourite works. Mohamed Bourouissa Born 1978 in Blida (Algeria); lives in Paris A graduate of the 脡cole nationale sup茅rieure des arts d茅coratifs in Paris, Mohamed Bourouissa photographs a world he knows intimately: urban housing projects and their residents. Wandering through neighborhoods on the Paris outskirts in La Courneuve, Pantin or Argenteuil, he seeks out 鈥榥o man鈥檚 lands鈥� such as dead-end streets, hallways and parking lots. These become the settings for elaborate staged scenes that he puts together using his notes and sketches. His models, young people he meets while scouting for locations, not only pose for him but take part in the adventure, so the photo shoot becomes a performance in itself. Mohamed Bourouissa appropriates subjects that have become media clich茅s usually associated with photojournalism. Marie Bovo Born in 1967 in Alicante (Spain), lives in Marseille This installation takes its inspiration from Book V of Dante鈥檚 Inferno which describes the intense, destructive passion of Paolo and Francesca. A woman鈥檚 voice (that of Maha Hasan) sings the text in Arabic, reminding us that one of Dante鈥檚 sources is an anonymous Islamic text, The Book of Muhammed鈥檚 Ladder. This work is part of a collaboration between Marie Bovo and Kadhim Jihad, an Iraqi-born French poet and literary critic who has translated works by Dante, Rimbaud, and Rilke into Arabic. During their collaboration, she felt a sense of impossibility, because any translation fails to convey the full meaning of a word or phrase, and inevitably results in something that differs from the original. As she says, 鈥渃ertain words, certain feelings cannot be passed from one language to another, and seem to hover in-between them鈥�." Here, although visitors who cannot speak Arabic will not grasp the words鈥� literal meaning, they can hear the poetry鈥檚 musical quality and feel the pain it describes in a visceral way. With image and voiceover, the artist transcends the spoken word, so the installation becomes a kind of language itself. Christoph Draeger The role, influence, and authenticity of images are essential concepts for Christoph Draeger. He visits disaster sites and makes or collects images of them, then deconstructs, reworks, and reassembles them in photographs, videos, installations, or performances. His works invite the public to not only to look at disasters, but to question how they are perceived and presented by the media. This work belongs to his series "The Most Beautiful Disasters in the World,鈥� in which he makes press photos into giant jigsaw puzzles. Puzzles typically depict banal imagery, such as idyllic landscapes or artworks. He subverts this convention, using the kind of shocking mass-media images we normally look at once and then throw away. This paradoxical juxtaposition makes the images unsettling. Christoph Draeger plays with notions of reality and fiction, manipulating our imagination, our perception, and our collective memory. Rob Hornstra Born in 1975 in Utrecht (The Netherlands), where he still lives Rob Hornstra defines himself not as a photographer, but as a documentary maker. His books are self-published, and he handles every step in their production. The book itself is his project, and he controls it from beginning to end. 鈥淭here are no articles or biographies about me, written by so-called important curators or whatever,鈥� he says. His book 101 Billionaires (2008) moves through contemporary, post-Communist Russia, recording its transformations alongside the lingering remnants of the "old world.鈥� Rob Hornstra is fascinated by the Russian people, and his sober depictions of their daily life are filled with empathy and truth. Each image, he says, makes an intrinsic contribution to the documentary, but is also autonomous: 鈥淭he photo is not so much a recording of a place or person, but an archetype of that place or person.鈥� Rob Hornstra also founded FOTODOK.org, which is dedicated to the promotion and distribution of documentary photography. Saul Leiter Born in 1923 in Pittsburgh; lives in New York Saul Leiter鈥檚 work remained virtually unknown for a long time, although Edward Steichen, then director of the photography collection at the MoMA, exhibited some of Saul Leiter's photographs there in 1953. Saul Leiter started out as a painter, but quickly recognized the creative potential of photography and started making experimental photographs in the New York streets; these early works remained in his archives, unseen, in slide form. During the 1960s, he began a successful career as a fashion photographer. Published in several prominent magazines, his fashion pictures overshadowed his early, personal work (which he did nothing to promote). Saul Leiter鈥檚 work made a seminal contribution to the emergence of a 鈥榮chool of colour鈥� in American photography, which was to reach its height in the 1970s with artists such as William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, and Joel Meyerowitz. Marion Tampon-Lajariette Born in 1982 in Paris; lives in Paris and Geneva. This young French artist explores the ways scenes from well-known films transform the way we relate to reality. Here, she was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock鈥檚 thriller Rope, intended to give the impression that it was shot in one seemingly continuous, uninterrupted sequence, with camera movements themselves forming the starting point for the film. In Camera 1, Plan 8, the artist uses a precise sequence of camera movements from part of the film. Taking the sequence out of its original setting (a living room in a plush apartment), she applies it to an artificial, computer-generated image of the ocean. In this way, she isolates the movement and projects it into a neutral environment. Her soundtrack borrows from Rope as well -- footsteps, a door squeaking, dialogue, musical fragments 鈥� but, removed from its original context, it leads the viewer further into an abstract, fictional world. Masao Yamamoto Born in 1957 in Gamagori-City (Japan), lives in Yokohama Masao Yamamoto was originally a painter. Until recently, he produced a series of subtle, constantly changing installations, intuitively combining assortments of his small photographs to make compositions. In his new series, 鈥淜AWA=FLOW,鈥� his images stand alone. Here, he contemplates nature: the sky, birds, rocks, and flowers. 鈥淲hile watching the clouds, I realize I am seeing beyond them. I may be focusing on the clouds, but my mind is immersed in something else,鈥� he explains. 鈥淒rips of water seeping from a mountain form a flow known as KAWA. KAWA can also be seen as a pond on top of a mountain, overflowing, creating small streams that grow into great rivers. KAWA can change its face, sometimes seen as a rapid stream, at other times a quiet flow of almost still water.鈥� Masao Yamamoto鈥檚 work is inspired by Japanese Zen philosophy, in which meditation and the search for beauty play an essential role in enlightenment. He says, 鈥淎n ideal life for us is one of harmony and contentment.鈥�