21 May–23 August 2015
Preview: Wednesday, 20 May, 6:30pm
Frac Haute-Normandie
3, place des Martyrs-de-la-Résistance
76300 Sotteville-lès-Rouen
France
T +00 33 (0) 2 35 72 27 51
The Frac Haute Normandie has a strong commitment to photography, with a collection of over 500 photographic works, and holds monographic (Geneviève Cadieux in 2001, Bill Jacobson in 2007, Bernard Plossu in 2007, Darren Almond in 2011) and thematic (Identité(s) territorialité(s) in 2010, Learning Photography in 2012) exhibitions on a regular basis.
This year, we are devoting a monographic exhibition to the photographer Gilles Saussier, a set of whose works is held by the Frac Haute-Normandie. This retrospective brings together, for the first time, extracts from his major projects in Bangladesh, France and Romania: Studio Shakhari Bazar (1997–07), Envers des villes, endroit des corps (2003–08), Le Tableau de chasse (2003–10), B. Mineur (2010–15). Although these four distinct “sites” evoke specific places—the street, housing estates, cemeteries and factories—they put history and memory at the very heart of the project.
Since the late 1990s, Gilles Saussier has used an experimental documentary approach, in which the photos do not freeze movement or historical narrative, but, on the contrary, challenge the established definition of the memory of images. Gilles Saussier’s artistic practice is forever altering the interpretation, meaning and intention of series of images, regardless of whether or not they were produced for his previous job, during his time as a photojournalist. He sees the act of taking a photograph act as a performative act, as a juncture between revisiting the documentary tradition, anthropological variables and the legacy of minimalism. His photographs have in common the relationship to the memory of the voiceless, history told by the powers that be, including the media, and the relationship of the document to the monument.
Gilles Saussier has taken part in Documenta 11 in Kassel (Germany) in 2002, the exhibitions Covering the Real at the Kunstmuseum in Basel in 2005, L’archive universelle, la condition du document et l’utopie photographique moderne (2008) at the MACBA in Barcelona, among others. His publications include Studio Shakhari bazar (Le Point du Jour, Paris 2006), Situations du reportage, actualité d’une alternative documentaire (Communications, no. 71, Paris 2001), and Le Tableau de chasse (Le Point du Jour, Paris 2010).
Press contact: Chloé Palau: chloe.palau.frachn@orange.fr
Frac Haute-Normandie is funded by Haute-Normandie Regional Council, the Ministry of Culture and Communication / DRAC Haute-Normandie and Sotteville-lès-Rouen City Council.
