Vilnius, Odessa, Liège — Bertrand Grimont Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 6 → December 31, 2010

Between the realms of news reporting and personal work, Thomas Manneke threads within their very dividing line. Walking the streets, the artist grabs the city’s heart: its official and less official architecture, its young or older dwellers and anything that happens between those. The look is bereft of pathos and narrative. Being very close to people and places, the photographer captures reality, the backstreets as much as the historical and grandiloquent monuments. The fact remains that no information is given, no journalistic point of view transpires. In the street, crossing paths with a child in a church, or a student in the art college, the meeting happens and we witness the birth of a work of art made of composition choices, light and colours. By making a step aside, Thomas Manneke takes sides.

Occupying the city, the anonymous actors take the stage. Liège, Odessa, Vilnius, this is where those men and women live and Thomas Manneke takes their portrait. The older people contemplate, the young ones embrace, the children play. Each looking forward to the event, in the hanging moment when silence is made. Reserve, concentration, daydreaming, all of which makes life outside the uninterrupted flux is grabbed here. Aware of each and everyone, the artist captures postures and gazes in their most delicate aspects, a lowering of the shield — of abandonment others will say — brought by a shared trust.

Manneke’s pictures show life as it is, with its procession of wandering dogs and young people dancing in the evening. Bereft of any subterfuge, they show the passing of time, the rust which pervades the iron curtains and the churches which fill and empty inexorably. In the street, Thomas Manneke shares the existence of these men and women for an instant, his shots reflecting the quality of the attention given to each of them. The sharing born from the meeting, and what the dwellers from here or there offer, goes well beyond appearances. Behind each character we guess the words that where expressed. Peaceful, the actors bring us their presence in the world.