World Press Photo Exhibition

When standing before the selected photos of the World Press Photo exhibit, on view at the Azzedine Alaia space in the Marais, it is impossible to divorce yourself from the graphic nature of the internationally-snapped selection of photos. Impossible in a way that, perhaps, you can with press photos that glut our daily lives in crumpled morning newspapers and distracted viewings of the evening news.

The foreign reporting that trickles into our lives often seems unfathomable for a cosmopolitan Western dweller to conceive of. War, savagery in the streets, fear of your neighbor, abject hunger—this exhibit brings the faraway chaos up close and personal, bringing other people’s daily realities into focus in a way that becomes heart-lurchingly tangible. We’re not talking “empathy.” This is about humanism rooted far more deeply than that: getting eye to eye with forceful realities that throw off the quotidian sense of what can and does exist. It will, in a word, stun. Stun in both senses– bewitch, and, moreover, shock.

The World Press Photography Contest has been ever-increasing in breadth since its inception, in 1955, in the Netherlands. It is a non-profit organization, holding the largest annual press photography contest in the world. The winning photographs are assembled into a traveling exhibit that tours 45 countries. The first photo to ever win the contest was by a Danish photographer, Mogens von Haven, who snapped a photo of a man dramatically—almost slap-stick in form— flipping off of his motorcycle.

Photographer: Mogens von Haven.

This year, over 100,000 submissions were entered into the contest. Each year a specialized panel evaluates and narrows down the winners from the pool of candidates. The vastness of the photographed experiences is broken down into ten loose categories within which there are first, second and third prizes and some honorable mentions, for series and single shots respectively. Below are but a few of the photos, mesmerizing both with visual artistry and arresting subject matter:

Photographer: Craig Golding (Category: Sports).

To be frank, I care very little about most sports. I hate team spirit, lycra, running, and whooping. I was not expecting to be wooed by the sports category. But Golding’s portrait of Jack Mathieson, a 91-year-old swimmer, made my heart melt. The man is close to a century old and he’d just swum 800 meters! Incredible. Even more incredible is how Golding somehow captured something about this senior that made him look like a… boy. For all his wrinkles, Mathieson is standing there with his wet hair plastered to his head, his goofy ears sticking out, his freckles dancing all over his body, and triumph in his bleary water-logged eyes.

Photographer: Stefani de Luigi (Category: Contemporary Issues).

The giraffe is such a vertical animal: its gangly grace is all about its elongated neck and lean legs. The sight of this horizontally-splayed giraffe is horrible. There is something almost ridiculous about it – it looks like it passed out drunk, or like it’s some kind of road kill. No: it is dying of thirst, neck curled powerlessly into the dirt of a dry African riverbed which had not seen rain in three years.

Photographer: Kees Van de Veen (Category: Arts and Entertainment).

This photo manages to be meta in an amazingly non-pretentious way. It’s a photograph of a woman (photographer Janna Bathoorn) snapping a picture of a seated man, behind which another man props up a pastoral tableau directly behind his head, as a trompe l’oeil background. The actual background is a gray clouded sky with an eerily menacing feel, wildflower strewn fields clear to the horizon, and a short clothesline of droopy laundry. The painted picture held behind the sitter is of a lush green field in which sheep roam and the sky is a lush blue.

There’s something wonderfully bittersweet about this juxtaposition of reality and fantasy – envisioning and projecting the circumstances you dream about to overshadow dreary reality, while equally representing disappointment about what is in front of you, having to resort to illusion when what you wish were real is not.

Photographer: Luca Santese (Category: Daily Life).

There is something almost painterly about this photo, maybe because of the mother-and-child trope and the prettily diffused light. In crime-ridden Detroit, this single mother is seen standing in her front yard, a lone figure looking across a fence that segregates her from the neighboring houses beyond it. A lurid red light emanates from her own doorway, and the grayish tinge of bricks and pallid sky creates an uninviting background to her life. Though the mother is vulnerable and alone in the sad landscape, her pale naked young son — with his cute tiny butt sagging over her forearm — is her family, and that they have each other provides a bit of hope.

Photographer: Mohammed Abed (Category: Spot News).

This photo is so, so horrifying I don’t really know what to say. When I first laid eyes on it, I wanted to make it unreal, I told myself “it looks like a broken, battered doll”. But it is not. She’s not a doll – it’s a little girl. A person, with her mouth ajar, and blood on her cheeks, and a halo of dirt around her head, which will never grow to be any bigger than the sharply edged rocks scattered nearby.

Photographer: Rina Castelnuovo (Category: General News).

This photo is perturbing not only because it is upsetting to witness the obvious aggression but also because it is so beautiful even as it is depicting an act of harassment that should squarely be considered ugly. The arc of the wine, unfurled mid-air is like a liquid crimson serpent, almost like some kind of party gag flung joke-ishly. The expression of the young boy slinging the contents of his drink from the flimsy plastic cup at this woman is completely unashamed, almost casual. Her face is completely hidden; only the swivel of her hips away from the boy shows her reaction.

It begs the question of what went on between them – if she provoked him in any way, if he’s so ravaged by anger and prejudice that his act is apropos of nothing. There is no small irony in the overlap of Arabic and Hebrew words — scribbled on that sea green panel above their heads — and the inability of rival cultures to communicate below.

Photographer: Farah Abdi Warsameh (Category: General News).

On most days with sweet blue skies, one often thinks to oneself, nothing bad could happen. But the blue sky as the backdrop to this savagery reveals a wretched, Nietzschian depiction of an apathetic universe. The baby blue sky seemingly fit for a picnic, instead hangs over horrific, rampant savagery of fourteen grown men pelting a fellow human creature to death. They’re punishing this man for having committed adultery.The right arm of the man in the right quadrant of the picture is fully extended, to maximize the momentum of his throw.

I’ve remained haunted by the man with the raised right arm, poised to chuck the malevolent meringue of a rock, ever since I saw this. He is the emblem of the most base unquenchable violence, ready to strike unmercifully, fueled by the zeal of his fundamentalist moral righteousness.

Winner of World Press Photo Contest, Photographer: Pietro Masturzo.

This was a controversial choice, which the selection panel readily admits, for the prestigious win. Masturzo’s photos are blurry, shadowy, their context as vague as the lighting. If you didn’t read the accompanying text, you might not see much value to them aesthetically.

Masturzo’s photos capture protesters in the night in Iran, anonymously yelling dissent from the rooftops after the unjust election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This illicit, subversive behavior is enacted in the most punishing of circumstances, which in itself is a testament to the tirelessness of the human spirit: the belief that what is deserved will come forth, and that what is unearned needs to be called out, and that repression does not eviscerate dignity from people’s souls.

The spotlight on these subjects makes the viewer absorb the sorrows and hardships and triumphs of other corners of the world. You see what the photographer saw, a glimpse into unmentionable anguish or extraordinary circumstances; you are witness by transfer. The burdens and courage you see become the burdens and courage in your own existence. It is important to value this kind of reporting, this kind of information, and to be privy to the world at large, which we are so quick to forget amidst the minutia of our lives.

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The World Press Photo Contest is a  traveling exhibition, showcasing worldwide.
For a full  list of  dates and venues for the 2010 tour, visit the World Press Photo website at: http://www.worldpressphoto.org.

The exhibition will be on view in Paris until June 17th, 2010.

Azzedine Alaia
18 rue de la Verrerie
Paris 75004
01 42 72 19 19

Metro: Hotel de Ville

Sweat Shop: An Interview with Café Couture Owner Sissi Holleis

Merging do-it-yourself purpose with communal creativity, Sweat Shop is a recently-opened venue intent on helping you realize your crafty endeavors. The café couture, located in the 10^th arrondissement, features 10 work stations equipped with SINGER sewing machines. People are encouraged to drop by and work on sewing and knitting projects. For those needing more instructive assistance, there are 5 courses offered a week to help people perfect their couturier skillz (including workshops specifically for kids and special customizing sessions). Guest designers and collaborators will pop by keep the creativity rolling, and neighboring Bob’s Juice Bar provides tasty treats to keep your concentration sharp as you whip up your personal Project Runway fantasies.

LF: When did you first start sewing? Was it something you learned through your family, or did you start out on your own?

Sissi Holleis: As a little girl I started sewing and crocheting for my Barbies and other favorite teddies.

LF: How did you select the space on rue Lucien Sampaix? Is this locale off the canal specially selected?

SH: It was Martena [Duss, the co-owner of Sweat Shop] who fell in love with this shop next to [Bob’s] Juice Bar; she lives just around the corner it seemed like the place to be.

LF: What was your background before opening Sweat Shop?

SH: I’ve been a “young designer” for over 12 years. The label of my brands were SISSI HOLLEIS and sissishirt. I had a shop in the Oberkampf quarter, exporting mostly to Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong.

LF: Sweat Shop is a cheeky name for such a lovely place as your store. It brings up a loaded concept: the tension between creation, production, and commerce. What is your philosophy about these elements of design?

SH: For native English-speaking people, yes, there is that connotation. For the French, they even don’t know the meaning, they think more of ‘sweat shirts’. Anyway, we don’t joke about the reality of sweatshops in China, no way. It’s more like a “jeux de mots”, and it’s defending our philosophy: less buying-more trying, overcoming the impulse to “acheter-porter-jeter” (buy-wear-get rid), and instead “recycler sa garderobe”…

LF: The design of the shop is fantastic; what did you draw on for inspiration to create this atmosphere?

SH: We love Berlin style, very cozy, retro-vintage ambiance,  like being in somebody’s living room. We had the great help of a Belgian team, they brought furniture in from Belgium and produced special pieces for Sweat Shop.

LF: Do you feel Paris, once renowned as the epicenter of couture, has completely lost this reverence for craftsmanship? Are you trying to bring attention to this old tradition, or are you trying to liberate it from an elite art form and democratize it?

SH: Of course it’s still a very important center of couture, but time and lifestyle change. New places and atmospheres of couture here can be created — we try to give people the chance to get back into couture, like our great grandmothers did, passing on their gift from generation to generation. Sweat Shop is the place to find inspiration, creativity, and, why not, relaxation.

LF: Do you have any personal “sewing specialties”?

SH: I like free-style hand sewing and “wild” machine forward-backwards sewing.

LF: You’ve already organized some collaborations/collaborators. Who would you like to collaborate with in the future? In real life, and in a fantasy world?

SH: We’d like to collaborate with Bernard Willhelm soon, young new designers who work we admire, and… Alber Elbaz is the fantasy.

SWEAT SHOP
13, rue Lucien Sampaix, 75010 Paris
Metro Jaques Bonsergent
tel: 09 52 85 47 41
Open Tuesday-Friday: 1pm-9pm, Saturday-Sunday: 1pm-7pm, closed on Mondays.

Sewing machine rate:  6 euros
Workshops: 20–80 euros
Special offer coffee/cake: 5 euros
-10% reduction for students

GUESTS LIST: Some favorites from ArtParis+Guests

ARTPARIS+GUESTS a contemporary art fair with the participation of 114 galleries and seven platforms for emerging art. The aim is to be communal and integrate international galleries into le French scene. Whether the fair is off the ground enough to bring in a really global scope is debatable, because according to the statistics, 77 French galleries overwhelm the representation (plus a smattering of Scandinavian and European countries represented, and a lone US gallery). Nonetheless, the concept is a good one, in that expansive I’ll-bring-someone-new-to-the-dinner-party type of way. Here’s a round-up of some favorites.

Gallery: Pascal Vanhoecke at Marc Dorcel Productions

Part of a broader if-this-was-not-at-the-Grand-Palais-this-would-be-a-straight-up-porn-closet platform, France Cadet’s “Boites à mmh…” consisted of walkie talkie looking cylinders with kinky drawings that make moaning, exclaiming, panting, or breathy noises (video above). If not great art, they’re just the handy size to prank someone. Or make people very uncomfortable in the metro. Awwwww yesssssss.

Gallery: Acte 2 + Art U Room

Ryu Itadani’s cartoonish sketches of pop culture products, mostly recognizable drinks and condiments like Sprite and Kikkoman soy sauce, were disarmingly sweet renderings of the staples that mark our lunch breaks and the inescapable branding that makes its way into our meals.

Ryu ITADANI “Kikkoman”, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas, 27.3cm x 27.3cm, 2008

Gallery: Anne Barrault

Part of the Utopia/Dystopia platform, Yona Friedman and Jean-Baptiste Decavèle used black and white photographs of scenic craggy cliffs and calm waters and thensuperimposed them with maps, and doodled creatures who rise from the landscape and cavort. Could be the blueprint for a cool sci-fi movie.

Yona FRIEDMAN & Jean-Baptiste DECAVÈLE “Balkis Island”, 1 of 49 photographs, 23 x 32 cm, 2009

Gallery: Kalhama & Pippo Contemporary

Why, what have we here, it’s a “Sorry Luv” light sculpture by Liisa Lounila. Twinkling lights flicker on and off in these two words – don’t you wish your apology/brushoff phrases could be immortalized with flashing lights? I could absolutely imagine this in Lily Allen’s living room.

Liisa LOUNILA “Sorry Luv”, light sculpture, 2009

Stand C12: Afriques

What these spotlights on emerging art, in this case African art, actually accomplish is polarizing – do these visions end up isolating African art, by focusing on where it comes from? There was nothing pandering about it, really, but it’s a question that lingers.

Anyways, Billie Zangewa uses layers of embroidered cloth to bring added dimension to the color scheme of her piece “Second Act”. A spectacle of acrobats performing to a rapt audience doesn’t necessarily seem to say much about Africa, but the sheen of the silk intricately cut and collaged is a refreshingly singular medium.

Nearby, Seydou Keita’s black-and-white photo from the 1950s of a reclining woman creates a striking visual thanks to incredibly vivid pattern play. The clashing patterns are somehow harmonious:  the woman is draped in a floral dress, has polka dot kerchief tied around her head, and lies upon a checkered spread behind which a swirled cloth background is suspended.

By contrast, David Goldblatt’s 1972-era black-and-white photos have a much more raw quality. His photo of a shop assistant (below) shows the subject eyeing the camera suspiciously. Lined behind him are rows of canned products: Jungle OATS, Red Robin Canned Peas, syrup-soaked Bartlett pears, and, for 19c, Chicken with Rice in a can.

David GOLDBLATT The Modi’s daughter in their shop before its destruction under the Group Areas Act, Fietas, Silver Gelatin, 1977

Gallery: Lelong

Barry Flanagan’s ink on paper sketches of nudes were incredibly beautiful in their minimalism. One sketch depicts a nude woman kneeling over a table, arched over a piece of paper, face and neck eclipsed behind a vase of flowers in the foreground. The line is tremulous but soft, capturing the woman’s corporeality beautifully, while making the surrounding physical objects seem uncertain — a wine glass wobbly, the clean lines of rectangle of white paper distorted.

Perspective is obviously something Flanagan likes to play with – in the neighboring sketch, a woman is seen lying on her back, head towards the viewer. Her eyes are closed, her breasts each veer their separate right-left ways, her lackadaisically raised hips connect to dangling legs. Though she’s nude, there is nothing hypersexualized about her, and the weave of the ink lines capture the vagaries of womanhood.

Nearby, Jaume Plensa’s “Self Portrait as Canetti” series ignores the details and goes for blocky black silhouettes. Thoughts waft up from the silhouette’s heads like steam from a pot of tea, a vertical string of letters spelling out the musing.

Jaume PLENSA, “Self Portrait as Elias Canetti”, Nepal, 77 x 52 cm, 2009

Gallery: JMG

Artist: Jean-François Fourtou’s furniture designs are at once hyperfunctional and totally random. Two small-scale models are on display – one of a sliding table top that doubles as a slip-cover for a bath. The neighboring model is that of a bed with an armoire built around it, covered in black and white photos. The bed flips up and recedes into the armoire, revealing the underside as a black-and white photo. This art and blends into the bed-armoire-cum art gallery. There are photos of the actual, proper-scale versions of these pieces. Pretty ingenious use of space — especially of interest given the limits of tiny Paris apartments. An actual-sized desk is the showpiece. It consists of a glass-top desk, chair, and wood waste bin which are mirrored in inverse upside down. Thanks to the help of large bookcase that keeps them straddled apart, the two chairs desktops and wastebins are a single unit but functional structure.

The most curious aspect of Fourtou’s creations was the snail shells affixed to the desk/bookcase, and along the walls of the gallery. The coils brought a natural we’re-in-a-prairie type charm to the great indoors, and yet they were at the same time I bet they’d be disconcerting to have in your apartment. Imagine looking up from your computer and see a snail shell the size of bike helmet on your wall.

Jean-François FOURTOU, “Escargot”, Resin and different materials, 107 x 33 x 30cm, 1999

Gallery: Keza

Brighu Sharma’s pieces are each numbered instead of titled as part of Sharma’s “Short Stories” series. Her watercolor and pencil illustrations (below) fuse disparate elements together like, creating a kind of unfamiliar dreamscape, but her style is somewhat reminiscent of Marcel Dzama’s.

Across the wall, Nibha Sikander’s découpage confronts the notion of female form by collaging clothing pattern instructions, shaped into corset and bra silhouettes. Pasting onto handmade paper backgrounds, red lines are drawn upon the underwear to emphasize to breasts and nipples. The mechanics of the body and shaping and distorting it are paralleled by the use of geometrical folds of the clothing pattern instructions.

Gallery: School Gallery Paris

Gerber babies and dick jokes do not usually go in the same thought bubble. Unless you’re Michaela Spiegel, apparently! Spiegel’s taken the ‘recycled art’ thing for a run by retouching vintage photos of well-behaved young’uns with gouache. The series “Images d’Enfance Perdue” uses black and white snaps of kids propped sweetly on stools, standing behind faux pastoral backgrounds, and accepting communion — and expertly defaced with drawings of syringes, swords, hand grenades, sexy long gloves, earrings, knives, crowns of thorns, or, yes, dicks. Children of yore—beneath those starched collars and pressed pants, they were so kinky!!

Fondation Francès

Claudia Gambadoro’s “Box” video installation has a totally different take on childishness. Her video is played from the back of a sideways-turned cardboard box. The interior walls are  sketched with rooms like a flat dollhouse. The video at the bottom of the box shows a girl inside a large box (meta!) drawing all the rooms and accessories of a house on the walls, and her lines continue with an increasing frenzy, drawing over and over until the drawings are not recognizable. Gambadoro touches on the creativity of a child’s imagination to create entire worlds with bare materials, while also playing on the claustrophobia of playing house and the constraints of modern living.

Believe It: American Media Could Learn a Thing or Two from the French (…or at least Robert Delpire)

With cultish exceptions, the pursuit of a career in publishing and the respect for print seem to have become vintage values in America. The amount of evidence that modern media and publishing is in a terribly precarious state could smother a person: book sales have completely plummeted. Walmart is usurping bestseller sales with bargain, practically-throwaway prices. Ad pages in magazines have decreased by significant percentages. Newspapers are folding. There’s a startling lack of job postings on media career sites once rife with lowly, foot-in-the-door positions. And yet…

And yet there are those who assiduously, valiantly still cling to the notion that publishing is an industry worth the struggle to be part of, be it in book, magazine, or online form. For all the frustrations and insecurities, being part of a trade that at its core has been established in order to create a forum of expression, feed our understanding about contemporary (or timeless) issues and enhance our scope for fantasy is, well, nothing less than extraordinary.

If there’s ever someone who embodies that fighting the good fight is worth it, it’s French maestro Robert Delpire, whose resume boasts creative positions as wide-ranging as literary magazine editor, book publisher, artistic director of publicity, film producer, cultural programmer, and curator. [Pause to wipe brow].

A retrospective of his incredible publishing archive, Delpire & Cie, is currently on display at the Musée Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. While viewing the projects he has delivered to the public, the question percolates: in relation to this uniquely successful, decades-long publishing career, where does contemporary publishing stand? Can anyone be a publishing mogul in the arts anymore?

Initially, Delpire studied to be a doctor. While in medical school, he took up the editor position of the school’s newly-established literary magazine (yes, apparently, even French medical students were provided with an outlets for expression that’s how impressive the French literary tradition is). It was this experience, at the helm of the academic journal, which inspired Delpire to trade his sterilized lab coat for a rumpled tweed blazer. It’s a rather extreme career switch (i.e. the kind of thing that makes Jewish grandmothers get very upset), but one he was obviously suited for. When the first issue came out in 1950, entitled Neuf – meaning nine; also, new — it was, from the get-go, a serious art review. Under Delpire’s direction, subsequent issues of Neuf included a roster of contributors that reads like a who’s-who of modern art and intéllo stars: Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Sartre and André Breton. Not. Too. Shabby.

His illustrious career only snowballed. Delpire’s killer selection instincts imbued icon status to many then-débuting artists. In 1958, he was the first to publish [previously unknown] Robert Frank’s indelible series The Americans. In 1967, he was the first European publisher to introduce Where the Wild Things Are (Max et les Maximonstres) to the French. Throughout the 1980s, Delpire organized and curated visually compelling photo supplements for French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur. Perhaps his most integral contribution to modern art publishing as we know it: the institution of the photo-poches series, merging the accessibility of a paperback with the beauty of an art book. These editions eliminated the aggrandized elitism and inflated price tag of art books, opening the genre up to a more populaire audience. Today there are 150 photo-poches titles, translated into many languages, which are staple reading for any amateur of photography.

“Je n’ai jamais publié quelqu’un qui ne m’intéressait pas”, Delpire stated in response to how he has managed to sustain such a creatively successful career, and across various media at that. Upon first glance, it seems like such an obvious statement. But in a world that is filled with compromises and business plans and marketing tactics, the almost childishly stubborn I-do-what-I-like attitude is incredibly heartening. A fulfilling career in the media is as simple as realizing coup de coeur projects?! Well, of course: authentic enthusiasm should be at the core of every project. This points to a most unfortunate rift between American and European attitudes in publishing. A career like Robert Delpire’s really demonstrates the solidity of Europe’s literary tradition and cultural values, which have managed to stay the course where the American media market has buckled under commercial pressures. As seen laid out over three floors and sixty years, the vastness of the visually stimulating projects Delpire has instigated and coordinated is proof-positive that a devoid-of-commercialism attitude can, and has, thrived.

But, of course, one must wonder… how many unrecognized Robert Delpire types are out there? Innovative and perceptive people who have failed to launch their tastes into sustainable careers? The philosophy of simply promoting what you love, admire and react to implicitly… it’s an attitude that appears to be going extinct in America. Those with financial capital only want to see more returns, and that rampantly commercial expectation taints art-as-expression. Conversely, the lack of finances requisite for upholding and championing beloved projects means that, in a public sphere, they only reach a small niche audience. Indeed let us not forget that publishing is a business, as much as it is a means of expression. And of course, business and the arts have perpetually been at odds. However, as huge staff cuts are made across the board and printed material goes the way of the microchip, these “business vs. creative” issues take on extra sharpness.

This Delpire exhibit really brings the philosophical quandary about the future of publishing to the forefront. The viewer definitely feels a surge of empowerment when seeing the artistic projects orchestrated by Delpire in the fields of photography, publishing, illustration, and the public arts. But that relish gets cloaked in a kind of mournful feeling, because how feasible is it for anyone to have a Delpire-esque career in the advent of 2010? It’s hard not to feel a certain sense of defeatism that his paradigm seems gone. Yet Delpire’s emphasizes that he is and has always been a collaborator: that an exhibit with his name on it is necessarily an exhibit that further includes everyone that he’s worked with. His humility is moving, but it also points to the strength needed for, and provided by, a tirelessly enthusiastic artistic and editorial community.