Françoise Huguier — Pinçe-moi, je rêve — MEP, Maison européenne de la photographie — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 4 → August 31, 2014

Françoise Huguier — Maison européenne de la photographie Françoise Huguier aura sans doute gardé de ses années d’enfance passées en Indochine un désir d’ubiquité. D’avoir été faite prisonn... 3 - Bravo Critique

This exhibition describes a world dreamt up by Françoise Huguier, with no promotional romanticism or lyricism, rather a collection of images gathered and elegantly created, as if it were nothing at all. Up close and personal with her subjects, with an insolence she claims as her own.

Crossing Africa at over 40°C, the polar regions of Siberia at minus 40°C, the jungle fever struggle of fashion shows, Colombian nuns in the privacy of their cell rooms, the South-East Asia of the 50s and its youth of today… the exhibition isn’t all-encompassing, but revisits the high points of Françoise Huguier’s photographic work.

Françoise Huguier, Pêcherie, Noviport, presqu’île de Iamal, Sibérie, 1992 © Françoise Huguier / Agence VU’

In this way, visitors will discover the world of this great photographer, who is also a great traveller: The polar regions of Siberia, reinterpreted with a new pick of images, closely echoing the films of Andreï Tarkovski.

A selection of vintage black and white photographs, printed by Jules Steinmetz : Françoise Huguier’s travel journal of her trip from Dakar to Djibouti, Sur les traces de l’Afrique fantôme, inspired by the book written by Michel Leiris, L’Afrique fantôme, and the Secrètes series, featuring women photographed in their bedrooms in Burkina and Mali.

Her venture into the world of fashion, in association with Libération, illustrating Françoise Huguier’s fascination with the skills of the studios and the challenge she faced of successfully creating offbeat images, under very difficult conditions and in a very short space of time (a fashion show lasts 15 minutes). This extremely closed world, an unlikely place for her to find herself, was an anchor and a revelation for her.

Françoise Huguier, Christian Lacroix, HC, collection printemps-été 1999, janvier 1999 © Françoise Huguier / Agence VU’

A small chapel, recreated within the exhibition, to present the Les Nonnes series, inspired by the aesthetics of the pious images in the artist’s grandmother’s prayer book and by Alain Cavalier’s film Thérèse.

The naked figures of the Saint Petersburg communal apartments and the Robes Noires series inspired by Natacha, the artist’s muse.

Françoise Huguier, Les appartements communautaires. Nus dans la cuisine, Saint Pétersbourg, Russie, 2005 © Françoise Huguier / Agence VU’

K-Pop and Hijabs in South-East Asia : a series of portraits of the young middle classes in Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bandung.

This work over a long period, produced in colour, reveals the influence of popular culture in South Korea. As for the hijab, it marks a re- interpretation of Islam as a fashion phenomenon, which we could call “Islam pop”. These two series illustrate the consumerist evolution of these post-modern societies, where appearance prevails over ideology.

J’avais 8 ans, or the hell of the jungle, which revisits the history of the end of colonisation in Indochina through the photographer’s childhood in Cambodia, with photos, of course, but also letters from the time and the clothes worn by the children at the time of the attack and abduction by the Viet Minh in 1950. She didn’t dream this up ! Finally, a series of thirty previously unseen photos — offering a glimpse into the artist’s private world — completes the exhibition, which also includes objects that serve as symbolic souvenirs.