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The Black Rose

David Pisani

May 11 – June 25, 2023

Opening – Thursday May 11 6pm – 10pm

In 1982, photographer David Pisani embarked on a personal project to photograph the city of Valletta (Malta) and its infamous red light district of Strait Street and ‘The Gut’. What began as a photographic essay on the city’s derelict buildings turned into an epic documentation of Valletta that spanned 29 years.

Valletta was founded in 1566 by Jean Parisot de Valette, Grand Master of the Order of St John. It was built on a grid plan by the knights of this order. The architecture has an interesting specificity, with its closed balconies and its religious ornamentation.

For two years, between 1798 and 1800, Malta was occupied by the French under Napoleon Bonaparte, and then by the British until its independence was declared in 1964. Throughout this period, there was a tacit understanding between the strict Catholicism of Maltese society and the prostitution that flourished there, first tolerated by the Order of St John and later encouraged and fed by waves of British or American sailors. Strait Street (from the Italian Strada Stretta) is a long, narrow street that was once lined with small, sleazy bars and brothels. With the disappearance of the sailors in 1979, the area was gradually abandoned and the buildings became dilapidated. The gentrification of the city began towards the end of the twentieth century.

Most of the photographs in the exhibition are taken from the book Vanishing Valletta, published in 2018, a sort of Maltese equivalent of the book Paris Perdu. Thirty original prints from this series are held in the permanent collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The exhibition will present an equivalent number of selenium and/or gold-toned silver prints made by the photographer.

David Pisani’s photographic work can be summed up as a relentless pursuit of the sublime and the erotic.
His earliest works (c. 1980’s) already showed a deep concern with the representation of the human body, the erotic nature of places and objects as fetishism and the inevitable association to sexuality and death; themes which are consistently present in all his work.
The link between decay and architecture is most evident in his photographic essay on the city of Valletta and the red-light district of Strait Street entitled ‘Vanishing Valletta’ which was first exhibited in Paris in 1996 during the Biennale of photography: Mois de la Photo à Paris under the title “La Valette et le Grand Port – Portrait d’une Capitale Maritime”. Pisani has also produced photo essays on the city of Dubai, the conflict zones in Cyprus and the city of Kyoto in Japan.
In 1998 he confronted the theme of the human body with a more explicit treatment of the themes of decay and death and produced a seminal body of work entitled “EVERY-BODY” developing a unique photographic chemical process that causes the image to alter itself over time as does the human body that grows old, dies and decomposes.
He is a fanatical darkroom printer with more than 30 years experience in commercial and fine art printing.

The Black Rose is the title of a publication consisting of a collection of anecdotes about Strait Street and The Gut and including a limited edition print.

All photographs © David Pisani

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VOCI

Giovanni C. Lorusso

March 21 – April 30, 2023

Opening Party – Thursday March 23, 6pm-10pm

Photo © Giovanni C. Lorusso

This spring we will have the pleasure of presenting VOCI, a photographic project by the filmmaker and photographer Giovanni C. Lorusso. This is a collection of images emanating from the artist’s imagination, mysterious and haunting images enhanced by a special development process with unpredictable results. For further information, including a biography of the artist, please see the attached press release.

Gallery hours
Tuesday to Friday by appointment (at 06 85 93 41 92)
Saturday and Sunday from 2pm to 7pm

Due to the size of the gallery and as it is a private space, masks (handed out) might be required. Also, the number of people admitted at any given moment may be limited.

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Actualités News

Mind’s Eye fête ses dix ans

September 17 / December 24, 2022

Photo © Adrian Bondy

We started this adventure in 2012, without really knowing where it would lead us.

Mind’s Eye is an non-profit association (loi 1901). One of its main objectives is to search for links between mathematics and photography. To this end, two booklets have been published (in both English and French), one on Numbers, the other on Sets. Others are planned.

At the same time, Mind’s Eye organises photography exhibitions at the Galerie Adrian Bondy (personal space). In ten years we have organised 42 exhibitions with 27 artists, exhibitions on various themes, always chosen for their singular images. We have presented a variety of processes, silver and digital of course, but also pinhole, platinotype, and zokin-gake (Japanese technique).

For this festival, eight artists will be selected each month to exhibit a few representative works; space does not allow us to show the work of all our artists simultaneously. In order to overcome this inconvenience, we have prepared a slide show with several images of each exhibition since the beginning. This slide show will be shown continuously throughout the exhibition.

September 17 – October 16

Opening party September 18

JOHN CLARIDGE

MICHEL DAMBRINE

DIRK DE HERDER

TAKEHIKO NAKAFUJI

CLAUDE PAVY

CHRISTIAN PONCET

BENOÎT SABOURDY

CHIEKO SHIRAISHI

October 22 – November 20

Opening party October 23

CAROLINE ABITBOL

FRANÇOIS DELANDRE

JEAN DRÉVILLE

DAN HAYON

PHAM VIÊT SI

COLETTE POURROY

NICOLAE SANDULESCU

MASAKI YAMAMOTO

November 26 – December 24

Opening party November 27

RÉGIS BODINIER

ADRIAN BONDY

ANTON BULYONOV

ANTOINE FUMAT

PHILIPPE GABEL

SHŌKŌ HASHIMOTO

RAY RENOLDS

MARIANNE TOUCHARD-HEYMAN

Gallery hours
Tuesday to Friday by appointment (06 85 93 41 92)

Saturday and Sunday 2pm – 7pm

Due to the size of the gallery and the fact that it is a personal space, masks (offered) will be requested of all our visitors. The number of people admitted at any one time may be limited.