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Oradour

John Claridge

June 8 – July 14, 2024

6pm – 9pm

ORADOUR

This exhibition marks the 80th anniversary of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre. On 10 June 1944, 643 inhabitants of this Limousin village were simultaneously executed by the Waffen SS and its buildings burnt down. The ruins have been preserved as a memorial to this humanitarian disaster.
Today’s terrible events are a grim reminder of man’s capacity for the worst horrors. Unfortunately, Oradour is just one of the uncountable such atrocities committed throughout the history of the world.
John Claridge visited Oradour-sur-Glane in February 2014. Our exhibition presents the powerful and moving photographs he brought back, recalling Piranesi’s magnificent etchings of the ruins of Rome.

It was a cold, early morning with a gusty wind that sent shivers down my spine. The heavy rain and threatening, dark clouds did not help.
As I took my first steps into Oradour-sur-Glane, it was deserted and filled with a sense of foreboding. Every street, building, automobile and house seemed to belong to a terrible sadness.
I had a feeling of entering, not just another time, but another dimension, with no escape. 
 — John Claridge

JOHN CLARIDGE

John Claridge was born in London’s East End in 1944. He began taking photographs at the age of eight with a plastic camera won at a local funfair. He left school at fifteen and took a job in the photography department at McCann-Erickson, becoming David Montgomery’s assistant. During his two years there, he was inspired by many, including the legendary designer Robert Brownjohn. When just seventeen, he turned up on the doorstep of Bill Brandt’s Hampstead home to present the renowned photographer with a print, and was received with courtesy and kindness. In 1963, he opened a studio near St. Paul’s Cathedral, specialising in magazine work and advertising. He pursued a career in advertising until recently, producing work for many large corporations. In 1967, he wrote, produced, and shot a controversial short film, Five Soldiers, about the American Civil War, with implicit allusion to the Vietnam War.

John Claridge has authored some fifty books, mostly published by his own company Lizard’s Eye, including Warriors, Heroes, Boxers (2018) and The Miners 1971 (2018), but also notably One Hundred Photographs (1988), for his exhibition at Hamilton’s Gallery, London, and East End (2016), published by Spitalfields Life Books.

He has received numerous awards from many organisations for his work in advertising and design, including London International Advertising Awards, Cannes International Advertising Festival, Design and Art Direction UK, Association of Photographers UK, The One Show New York, Clio Awards Worldwide USA and Creative Circle Awards.

John Claridge’s work is held in museums and private collections worldwide, notably the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art. He exhibits regularly in London.

All photographs © John Claridge

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Présences

Nacho Gómez Sales

April 18 – May 26, 2024

6pm – 10pm

in presence of the photographer

NACHO GÓMEZ SALES

Born in Castellón de la Plana, Spain, Ignacio “Nacho” Gómez Sales studied photography at the EASD in Valencia and the EASD Serra i Abella in Barcelona. He then went on to specialize in architectural photography at the IEFC in Barcelona.
In 2008, he left Barcelona and moved to Dijon, where he completed an internship at the Côte-d’Or’s Architecture, Environment and Town Planning Council (CAUE21). 
He settled permanently in Paris in 2009, where he has lived and worked ever since. Between 2010 and 2013, he completed a Master of Fine Arts specialising in Photography and Contemporary Art at Paris 8 University.
In 2017, his series on South Korea was selected in “Descubrimientos Photoespaña” in Madrid. 
In 2018 he made a self-edited book entitled London.
Since 2002, he has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions, notably in Castellon and Barcelona, but also in Paris, Orense and Gandia, as well as in specialised photography media.
Since 2009, he has been combining photography with his work at the Centre Pompidou bookshop.

PRÉSENCES

When I take photographs, I try to ensure that my images help to analyse the configuration of the space represented, its genealogy, and the use made of it by those who live there and those who have lived there. On the other hand, alongside this analytical aspect, there is an irrational aspect in my work. I choose places that somehow appeal to me not just for what they are, but for what they have been, for what is real and ghostly about them, for how their past is, at the same time, present, like wrinkles in the skin. As Italo Calvino says in Invisible Cities, the city is made up of the relationship between the measurements of its space and the events of its past. As if this space harboured a strange presence, and photography was the medium that transcribed it. Therein lies the interest for me in photographing places. 

The photographs in this exhibition, taken in France, Spain and Italy between 2005 and 2019, are divided into two sections. In the first part, we essentially find traces. Ruins and city walls create an echo between a latent past and an ongoing present. Just as light and time work on the surface of photographic film, a kind of memory is also recorded in these stone and concrete surfaces, whose juxtaposition is an array of temporary layers, to which urban gardens and plants growing wild alongside constructions are sometimes invited. 

In the second part, daylight has departed, and we find ourselves at night, that temporary space where people sleep, and which in popular culture is always linked, among other things, to the unknown, danger and ghost stories. Even if electric lighting in modern cities no longer leaves room for total darkness, the dim light that bathes surfaces modifies them, changing their colours and shapes. A banal, everyday object can thus become an enigmatic, mysterious object. These photographs take us on a nocturnal stroll through a city without inhabitants, where urban elements such as trees, doors, windows and railings are the sole protagonists. The photographs were taken with tripod and long exposures, in some cases transforming the darkness of night into the light of day.

Nacho Gómez Sales

All photographs © Nacho Gómez Sales

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Finissage Naked Glaciers

Ania Freindorf

February 29 – April 7, 2024

6pm – 10pm

in presence of the photographer

Here are a few photos from the exhibition. The guestbook is full of glowing comments, the most frequent adjective being “magnificent”.

Ania Freindorf will be back at the gallery during the last week of March. Please call us at 06 85 93 41 92 to make an appointment.

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Naked Glaciers

Ania Freindorf

February 29 – April 7, 2024

6pm – 10pm

in presence of the photographer

ANIA FREINDORF

Born in Krakow, Poland, Ania Freindorf has been a photographer, filmmaker and artist for 23 years. She began her career in fashion photography with Michal Pasich at Bogdan Axman Studio, assistant of Irving Penn in Krakow, where she first found inspiration for her male nude project “Humanus”. She then moved to Paris to pursue her passion for photojournalism and photographic art. She is represented by various press agencies. A former official photographer and photography teacher at UNESCO, she works with several United Nations agencies. She is also a teacher at the Leica Akademie in Switzerland.

THE “NAKED GLACIERS” PROJECT

In 2017 Ania Freindorf embarked on the “Naked Glaciers” project to bear witness to the perilous state of glaciers and show their fragility, mystery and beauty. The images she exhibits at Mind’s Eye were taken in Europe. Her ambition is to capture images from all seven continents. Among other activities, she works for the United Nations and organizes mountain photography courses for the Leica Akademie. We invite you to immerse yourself in these large-format photographs (some measuring 180 x 120 cm), and to reflect deeply on what is at stake for our planet. Note that the opening will take place on a leap day. We may well wonder what the state of the planet will be on the next leap day, four years from now.

All photographs © Ania Freindorf

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États d’Âme

Colette Pourroy

November 4 – December 10, 2023

Opening : Saturday November 4

6pm – 9pm

Colette Pourroy has made a name for herself by exploring her family in several episodes and in several books. At Mind’s Eye, we have presented three of her exhibitions on this theme.

Here, she turns to the soul and its relationship to our body. Movement and blurring are the means she has chosen to express them in this new series, État d’âme. She has already used these techniques in her previous work, notably in the series on her sister Ève, but here she pushes them further.

The images, reminiscent of certain photographs by Francesca Woodman or Duane Michals, leave ample room for the viewer’s sensibility and imagination.

SOUL-STATES

After all the deaths, all the cherished ones whose stories I told in my family saga, a desire awakened in me to evoke the soul and its relationship with the body.  

Between the collective conscience and unconscious, the symbolism, all that speaks of the unseen, the infinite, the subtle, writing the unclear makes way for the imaginary.

This living, moving photography shatters the divine: the intervals, gaps, punctuation, the invisible.

It is like automatic writing; what comes forth is unexpected, beyond my will, mysterious, yet fervently sought.

Drawing with light, painting with chiaroscuro and without artifice, only the spiritual binds these glimmering threads together.  

Colette Pourroy (September 2023)
Translation: Paul H. Rogers (September 2023)

COLETTE POURROY

After studies at the Villa Arson in Nice and thirty years as a graphic designer for publishers in Paris, Colette Pourroy, who had been taking photographs since the age of 13, decided to exhibit her work in 2003, following the death of her mother.

Over the following ten years, she exhibited her photographs of trees in black and white (BnF collection with Anne Biroleau) and colour in private collections in France and abroad. These resulted in two series, “Peau d’arbres” and “Le Sexe des arbres”, both published by Vis-à-Vis international.

The artist would later realise that these photos of trees symbolised the roots of her family saga.

A workshop in 2008 with Michael Ackerman, decisive for her freedom of vision and spirit, gave her the impetus, the awareness of others and the place of the human on the path.

From 2013 to 2023, this family saga (which began with the figure of the father) was exhibited in galleries and published by André Frère éditions.
It comprises four series, plus one on the couple (selected and published by MEP in 2014).
An extract from each series is included in the public collections of the BnF and the MEP, thanks to Héloïse Conesa and Pascal Hoël. 

BOOK SIGNING

Colette Pourroy will be signing her books at Paris Photo on the stand of her publisher André Frère on Thursday 9 November at 3pm.

All photographs © Colette Pourroy

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North Light

Christian Poncet

September 14 – October 22, 2023

Opening : Thursday September 14

6pm – 10pm

We know Christian Poncet for his beautiful pinhole camera photographs, twice presented at Mind’s Eye in the exhibitions “Le songe des rives” (2018) and “Metropolis” (2021).

His new exhibition, “North Light”, shows us another facet of the photographer’s work. Mostly in colour, these images were taken mainly in northern France and southern England, where the colder light brings enhanced clarity and contrast. Christian Poncet’s favorite motifs – geometric framing and isolated figures or structures – are accentuated by an inspired use of color and shadow. The sea is often present as a backdrop.

THE NORTH

Born in Lyon, Christian Poncet lives in Haute-Savoie and for the last twenty years has been photographing the surrounding lakes and mountains, all magnificent and varied landscapes that many photographers dream of. Yet, over time, these beautiful spaces have become so familiar to him that he no longer notices them, at least not with the photographer’s eye, always on the lookout for new images.

The North has always attracted him. He can’t explain it: is it the ‘monotony’ of the landscapes, flat and uniform, the changing light, or that very special atmosphere that breaks with his usual surroundings?
In 2012, he set off on a week-long journey from the Bay of the Somme to Belgium, from Cayeux-sur-mer to Ostend.

“That month of May was cool and rainy, the grey sandy beaches were deserted, with only a few solitary walkers struggling to make headway against the wind in their mackintoshes. There was nothing to encourage me to take out the camera.”

“But how could I resist the colourful, haphazard shacks of Berck-plage, its outdated white buildings or, a little further on, the seafront of Stella-plage: this dark stone “wall” facing the sea, overlooked by a vast car park and a wasteland with no future – with the only guardian being this bar-restaurant with the tempting sign “frites – gaufres – crèpes”.

Since then, he has returned to the region regularly, in spring or late summer. Little by little, the images have accumulated, and now he could turn the page, go elsewhere, discover other horizons. But no, the North awaits him, for a long time to come.
February 2018

All photographs © Christian Poncet

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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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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.