The HSBC Fondation pour la Photographie has published monographs produced by the 2008 competition prize winners, Aurore Valade and Guillaume Lemarchal. The new publications join the Fondation's collection of 26 works by distinguished artists since 1996.
The laureates were selected by the Fondation's executive committee after being proposed by Chantal Grande, artistic advisor for 2008. Their 96-page monographs were featured at the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival on 10 July 2008.
Grand miroir - photographs by Aurore Valade
"Aurore Valade's photos take you where you least expect to go. They're kitsch, [...], but pure concept all the same. [...] Aurore's lens probes the immense variety of human diversity that sociology tends to flatten with statistics. [...] The apparent shambles belies a tight organization and spawns a paradoxically astonishing realism. To achieve this effect the photographer has to confront the projects of her enigmatic subjects, which no glut of information could reveal."
François Bazzoli, art historian and professor at Marseille École des Beaux-Arts, author of the preface or Aurore Valade's monograph
Paysages de l'après - photographs by Guillaume Lemarchal
"Guillaume Lemarchal's photos show deserted sites that are nevertheless marked by human traces. [...] Individualised, often centred and stabilised on the horizon line, the fabric increases in density to become monstrous and sculptural. From the heart of the landscapes emerge islands, collections of shapes stranded in the middle of an expanding nowhere. [...] The more opaque and occlusive the fabric, the more it reveals the human craving to pit its will against the strength and temporality of nature. Under a lesser urge to conquer, the architectural patterns appear more playful, and the obstacle more permeable."
Évence Verdier, art critic, author of the preface of Guillaume Lemarchal's monograph
After an initial exhibition at the Arrêt sur l'Image Gallery in Bordeaux, the works of Aurore Valade and Guillaume Lemarchal will be shown at other venues on both sides of the Atlantic:
• Paris- Galerie Baudoin Lebon - 4 to 27 September 2008
• New York - Phillips de Pury & Company - mid-October 2008
• Nice - Atelier Soardi - 25 November 2008 to 6 February 2009
