| | | |  | | | Installation: Reading the Landscape by Olaf Otto Becker
© Clervaux – cité de l’image / Christof Weber, 2017 | | | Photographic season 2017 - 2018
DE TOUS LES NOIRS ET BLANCS | Part I
| | | | | | The relationship to reality is marked not just by opposites but by subtle nuances.
The unambiguous opposition of black and white gives rise to a vague inkling: there is more, something more complex, different shades. Contemporary photography makes no exception, both in its artistic mission and in its documentary approach.
The first rupture occurs on the surface, before travelling down to deeper levels and layers. In the window of the photographer's eye, everything is alive, the foreground as well as the background. Like waves rolling into one another, nuances merge together in favour of the uncertain, in favour of plurality. Blurring the borders. Everything shining in the light. Everything shimmering in the shade.
The new season of photographic images is based on multiple truths, straddling day and night, capturing the entire range of black and white colour. | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Histoires de frontiers/ Istanbul, Edirne Kapi, Turquie 26.04.09 © Yvon Lambert | | | | | | Histoires de Frontières / Border stories | | | | until 28 September 2018 | | | Jardin du Bra’haus II, Montée du Château, Clervaux
Yvon Lambert has an interest for borders and what they symbolise. Ten year long has he been traveling throughout border crossings. His impressive black & white photographs bring us deep within the historical context behind the scenes.
"The common factor linking all the locations depicted in these photographic stories is that they were or still are home to border crossings.
This roaming, cultivated by the dialogue between the observer and the photographer, is to be viewed and understood as an attempt to associate borders – government-imposed objects – with individual destinies, with the destinies of those who have crossed these borders, been stopped by them, even died at them, like Walter Benjamin. The words of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Georges Perec, Peter Handke and several other writers determined the choice of the locations that I captured through my lens.
The first steps of this project were taken during a time when the gradual dismantling of national borders seemed achievable. The last twenty years, however, have once again given rise to a spectacle of at times bloody conflicts within Europe itself. Which explains why some of the photographs contain traces of these events almost without my intention.
These border locations – rather mundane like any other location – feature landscapes and people, and yet there is something mysterious and woefully relevant about them. Georges Perec called them places of disappearance." (Yvon Lambert)
This photographic series was developed between 1989 and 2009. | | | | | |  | | | | Installation: Histoires de frontières by Yvon Lambert © Clervaux – cité de l’image / Christof Weber, 2017 | | | | | | | BIO: Born in 1955 in Luxembourg. Yvon Lambert lives and works in Luxembourg and is represented by the Agence Vu in Paris. Starting as a technical engineer in the iron and steel industry, he then studied photography in Brussels. He realizes some series on orders from foreign ministries and cultural institutions, national and international. He regularly works on the theme of borders in Europe, which counts as an award-winning project at the "Grand Prix of the City of Vevey" in 1995. His photographs are displayed all over the world. | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Rejoneo © Sophie Hatier, Marilyn / Courtesy of the "Académie Equestre de Versailles" by Bartabas | | | | | | Marilyn | | | until 28 September 2018
| | | Arcades I, Grand-rue, Clervaux
Sophie Hatier photographs the residents of the "Académie Equestre de Versailles", run by Bartabas. The way she looks at them, make them look fragile and vulnerable. Each horse expresses a personality, unmistakably recognizable, although they remain optically very similar.
Lacking colour and contrast, the images are instead like monochromes invoking multi-layered interpretations. Observers instinctively recognise the elegance, temperament, passion, kindness, sovereignty, individuality and character of the horse. A sense of grace and mystery also prevails. The images convey a certain autonomy, the unbroken will of the animal, its freedom enshrined even in this narrow visual field and against the geometric background of a Versailles stone wall, all but camouflaging the horse with its matching colour.
The nostrils – seen with the mind’s eye – are soft. The mane long and silky. The coat bright and radiant. The eyes wide open and clear, various blues with specks of grey? The smooth hair paints a landscape caressed by the wind, evoking a vast and undulating valley to the eye of the observer.
The radiant silky coat is white, much like the Camarillo white (referring to a specific breed). It also appears in pure white, ivory and grey white. Alongside cremello, perlino, beige or palomino, sometimes with a golden glow that is brilliant, luminous, ethereal. The monochrome penetrates deep and evokes a heavenly blonde by the name of "Marilyn". | | | | | |  | | | | Installation: Marilyn by Sophie Hatier © Clervaux – cité de l’image / Christof Weber, 2017 | | | | | | BIO: Sophie Hatier is a member of the group "France (s) Territoire Liquide". She is represented by the Galerie Djeziri-Bonn in Paris. After starting as a scenography photographer (for TNS, The National Theater in Strasbourg), she became a journalist (travels and reportages in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Mongolia, Armenia, Argentina, Cambodia and others).
www.sophiehatier.com | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | Nature trail, Gardens by the Bay, Singapore 10/2013
© Olaf Otto Becker, Reading the Landscape | | | | | | Reading the Landscape | | | | until 28 September 2018 | | | | | Echappée belle, place du marché, Clervaux
Olaf Otto Becker is concerned with traces left behind by humankind on nature and that are visible. He is a witness of our time, revealing the damages caused by modern society’s careless attitude towards nature, always requiring more space. The photographs show us the impact of human activities on nature, as well as the existence of artificial nature "substitutes".
"My pictures are an attempt to report on what I've seen with my own eyes and what has, deeply moved me. For many years I've been visiting places where human beings have encountered pristine nature, either directly or indirectly, and I've watched as these places have shrunk at an alarming rate.
The power of our economic system has now become so extensive and so complexly amorphous that it is very difficult to grasp. Corporations tend to react to legislation and other attempts to control their actions simply by strategically shifting their position. There is now good reason to believe that this planet is being changed ever more quickly and uncontrollably by human overpopulation, high material expectations and general opportunism.
Humans destroy primary forests, which have been growing for millions of years, within decades. At the same time, humans create a version of nature according to their own imaginations in the megacities of the world, turning nature into a product. | | | | | |  | | | | Installation : Reading the Landscape by Olaf Otto Becker © Clervaux - cité de l'image / Christof Weber, 2017 | | | | | | 'Reading the Landscape' shows three states of nature in the primary forests of Indonesia and Malaysia: intact nature, ravaged nature, and artificial nature. Altogether, the project documents a fatal ecological and economic process that has progressed beyond the point of reversibility." (Olaf Otto Becker)
BIO: Olaf Otto Becker was born in 1959 in Germany and studied communciation design and philosophy during the 90s. He combines his personal and artistic approach with documentary intention and socio-cultural questions. His photographs act as poetic images and documentation of processes in the world of today.
www.olafottobecker.de | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Blickwechsel © Ina Schoenenburg / Ostkreuz | | | | | | De tous les noirs et blancs | | | until 18 September 2018
| | | Arcades II, Montée de l’Eglise, Clervaux
The German photographer Ina Schoenenburg is concerned with the psychology of human interpersonal relationships. Her pictures seem familiar and outlandish at once. With her camera in her hand, she studies existential and social settings that affect our lives.
The photographic installation by Ina Schoenenburg features excerpts from four different image series: > Flashback > Blickwechsel > Portraits > Schmale Pfade
Despite this, the photographs on display all appear "related" to one another. The images question humans' perception of reality, as well as the external and social impacts affecting this relationship or casting new doubt on it.
The photographer depicts a free and easy life, as well as journeys that stray from the familiar path. She documents the dark side of human expectations and the limits of a reality that is both objectively defined and subjectively perceived. Finally, she unmasks the errors of judgment and ignorance of today's society with regard to inconvenient and uncomfortable truths that call into question the system and its functioning. Ina Schoenenburg's images feature strong individual stories, alongside weakened destinies in danger of succumbing to reality. | | | | | |  | | | Installation: De tous les noirs et blancs by Ina Schoenenburg
© Clervaux – cité de l’image / Christof Weber, 2017 | | | | | | BIO : Born in 1979 in Berlin, Ina Schoenenburg lives and works in Berlin. From 2008-2005 she studies architecture at TFH Berlin. Then from 2012-2009 she studies photography at Ostkreuzschule in Weißensee, Berlin, and supports her final thesis "Blickwechsel" with Sibylle Fendt. Since autumn 2016 she is member of the Ostkreuz agency.
www.inaschoenenburg.de | www.ostkreuz.de
Text : Annick Meyer / Translation : Claire Weyland | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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