Bruno Serralongue

# 69
Bruno Serralongue
Campfires
29 June – 5 September 2010
Concorde
Inconnu, Las Vegas
Series: “Destination Vegas,” 1996
Feu d’artifice pyromélodique (blanc), 16 août 1994
Series: ”Les Fêtes“, 1994
Hélène Retailleau Collection, Paris
Nouvion-Rey Collection, Monaco
“For me, photography does not come first.
It is mediated. It comes as a second phase,
after thought, after putting in place the
framework that defines the rules.”
selection from that and, if the event referred to in
the news item is of interest to me then, whatever its
geographical location, I make my own way out there
to take my own photos.”
Bruno Serralongue (France, 1968) started out on
his career in the 1990s after completing his studies
at Villa Arson, Nice, and the École Nationale
Supérieure de Photographie in Arles (he also has
an MA in art history). Taking into account the
specificities of photography, its history, use and
status, he has developed a distinctive body of
work which questions the truth of photographic
representation on the basis of a very precise
working method that enables him to analyse the
ways in which images are produced, disseminated
and circulated in today’s world. Before going into
the field, he gathers information published in the
media, using reports from the press, Internet, and
television and radio news, the way news agency do,
then “commissions” his own images. “My very own
Agence France Presse are the newspapers
and bulletins that are accessible to readers/viewers.
I therefore don’t have access to the raw information
– the dispatches – but to information that has been
sorted and selected by editors. I then make my own
He thus makes a selection of the events that interest
him and decides to set off for a given location, based
on the conflicts and social struggles that interest him,
as reported in the media. However, his “reports” on
these manifestations of social or political struggle do
not refer to the subject behind the pictures, which
is often the same for both the amateur and the
professional reporter, so much as to making of the
images themselves, which is always unique. In this
way, he is underlining the responsibility of the media.
He also makes a clear distinction between the artist
and the photojournalist: “Take two photographs
made, respectively by a journalist and by me during
a given event, and possibly of the same person or
scene. One will be a piece of information, the other a
piece of counter-information. I am not fascinated by
the event. Is it possible to be fascinated by a press
conference? I am not obsessed with being at the
heart of the event although that is certainly something
that motivates a good many photojournalists. They
set themselves up to make photographs that could
Groupe (CNHTC, Volvo Truck, Jinan, 13 août 2004)
Series: “Groupes de travail, Jinan,” China, 2004
Jean-Michel Attal Collection, Paris
have a historical impact, could bear witness to
History. Some photographs certainly have done that.
In my own case, the conditions for that to happen
don’t exist. But then my documents are historical
documents: that is to say, they are relative and
ambiguous.
Bruno Serralongue questions the objectivity of
photography, as Carles Guerra emphasises in his
catalogue essay for this show: “Bruno Serralongue’s
photographs are those of a reader who decides
to go and check a news item at the source.”
And this “reader/author” carries a suggestion of
the “Author as Producer” described by Walter
Benjamin, who wrote: “Hand in hand, therefore,
with the indiscriminate assimilation of facts, goes
the equally indiscriminate assimilation of readers
who are instantly elevated to collaborators. […] For
the reader is at all times ready to become a writer,
that is, a describer, but also a prescriber.” In “The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936), Benjamin also noted that, “with the increasing
extension of the press, which kept placing new
political, religious, scientific, professional and local
organs before the readers, an increasing number of
readers became writers – at first, occasional ones.
[…] And today there is hardly a gainfully employed
European who could not, in principle, find an
opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments
on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or
that sort of thing. Thus the distinction between author
and public is about to lose its basic character. The
difference becomes merely functional; it may vary
from case to case.”
Another distinctive aspect of the rigorous approach
taken by Serralongue the “reader of newspapers”
is that his interest goes beyond the event as
transmitted by the mainstream media – which is
inevitably partial, focusing on what are judged to
be the most noteworthy moments – to take in its
margins or periphery: the reality behind the scenes.
Beyond sensationalism or scoops, his texts – which
are purely descriptive – and his images concentrate
on the interstices of the information, creating
“sequences” with an “aesthetic that echoes the cold
and neutral style of corporate literature. […] Such
a result suggests compliance with the requirements
of the client rather than the presumed freedom of
the artist, who is free to attend sessions without the
usually de rigueur accreditation. Serralongue forgoes
the special authorisations and measures afforded
Célébration du premier anniversaire de l’indépendance du Kosovo, Priština, Kosovo, mardi 17 février 2009
Series: “Kosovo,” 2009
Courtesy Air de Paris, Paris, Galerie Baronian-Francey, Brussels, and Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich
to information professionals. His economy of access
is that of an ordinary citizen making his own travel
and accommodation arrangements, just as he would
organise his private holidays.” (Carles Guerra)
Another particularity is that Serralongue’s images
do not actually “add” anything to the event in
question, but instead offer a kind of counterpoint
that verifies or interprets the discourse articulated
by the media. These are consequently distanced
images, always at a tangent to the occasion
that engendered them. Finally, suggested in
Serralongue’s work is the notion of community,
insofar as his different series together build
gradually into a “repertory of collective action”
via the mass events that are transmitted by our
information society. For Carles Guerra, “Bruno
Serralongue’s photographic practice does not act
simply on the local and particular signified of each
image he produces. His field of action is located
beyond a visuality that strives doggedly to exhaust
the event by means of the gaze. That is why it is
not surprising to find that many of his images show
dialogues, conversations and debates – discursive
situations that confront the photographic medium
with its own limits.”
Bruno Serralongue is not a photographer of the
instantaneous. Travelling the world as he has been
doing for over ten years now, he has always carried
out thorough research before going from village fête
to international summit. Always holding ideological
and moral visions in check, his perception of the
many different events he relates is activist yet at the
same time “cooled” and neutral. That is the approach
he takes both to the sundry news items, festivities,
concerts, ephemeral gatherings and other events seen
in his early series and to the geopolitical conflicts
subjacent in more recent series such as “Encuentro”
(1996), “Homenaje” (1997), “Free Tibet” (1998), “Corée”
(Korea, 2001), “World Social Forum, Mumbai” (2004),
“La Otra” (2006), and “Tibet in Exile (Dharamsala)”
(2008) or “Kosovo” (2009–in progress). A long way from
photojournalism – the crisis of which, as Serralongue
reminds us, is a matter of identity first and foremost and
only then economic – his work is that of a free artist
who, giving the illusion of responding to a commission,
uses the photographic medium to propose, in all
critical independence, a different narrative model.
This exhibition features some hundred photographs.
While the emphasis here is on Serralongue’s
more recent series (“Manifestations du collectif
Cocktail Molotof
Series: “Risk Assessment Strategies,” 2002
Centre National des Arts Plastiques – Ministry of Culture and Communication, France / FNAC 02-924 CP-PH
des sans-papiers de la Maison des Ensembles,
Place du Châtelet, Paris,” 2001–3, “Earth Summit,
Johannesburg,” 2002, “World Social Forum,
Mumbai,” 2004, “New Fabris, Châtellerault,” 2009,
and “Kosovo,” 2009–in progress), its organisation by
subject, location and event also highlights a number
of recurring themes (demonstrators’ banners, press
conferences, demonstrations, political or festive
gatherings, etc.). For this exhibition at Jeu de Paume,
Bruno Serralongue has thus taken a circular view
of his work in order, as he says, “to bring together
photographs between which, although they may
show events that are unrelated or distant from each
other, we can detect similarities and constants.”
around the exhibition
z “The representation of the event in the photographs
of Bruno Serralongue”: thematic tour* by a
Jeu de Paume lecturer
Tuesday 29 June, 7 pm
z tour* of the exhibition by Bruno Serralongue
and Pascal Beausse, critic and curator in
charge of the photography collection at the
Centre National des Arts Plastiques
Tuesday 6 July, 7 pm z “Les événements politiques dans l’œuvre de Bruno
Serralongue et William Kentridge”: thematic tour* by
a Jeu de Paume lecturer
Tuesday 24 August, 7 pm
z publication: Bruno Serralongue
texts by Carles Guerra and Bruno Serralongue,
interview with Bruno Serralongue by Marta Gili
and Dirk Snauwaert
co-edition JRP Ringier/Éditions du Jeu de Paume,
with the support of Les Amis du Jeu de Paume
softbound with dustcover, 24.7 x 28.6 cm,
160 pages, 40 €
Jeu de Paume – Concorde
Jeu de Paume | Monnaie de Paris
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1 Place de la Concorde, 75008 Paris
access via the Tuileries Gardens, Rue de Rivoli entrance
www.jeudepaume.org
information
+33 (0)1 47 03 12 50
Tuesday (late opening) noon–9 pm
Wednesday to Friday noon–7 pm
Saturday and Sunday 10 am–7 pm
closed Monday
admission: 7 € – concession: 5 €
admission free to the exhibitions of the Satellite programme
Mardis Jeunes: free entrance for students and
visitors under 26 every last Tuesday of the month
from 5 pm to 9 pm
exhibition
16 April – 22 August 2010
z Willy Ronis, a Poetics of Engagement
Monnaie de Paris
11 Quai de Conti, 75006 Paris
information: +33 (0)1 40 46 56 66 / www.monnaiedeparis.fr
Tuesday to Sunday
11 am–7 pm
Thursday (late opening) 11 am–9.30 pm
closed Monday
admission: 7 € – concessions: 5 €
Jeu de Paume – extramural
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exhibitions
29 June – 5 September 2010
z William Kentridge, Five Themes
z Bruno Serralongue: Campfires
z Satellite Programme, Klara Lidén: Always Be Elsewhere
31 March – 17 November 2010
z Virtual Space, Agnès de Cayeux: Alissa,
Discussion with Miladus, Elon/120/211/501
on www.jeudepaume.org and in the resources room
Tours for individual visitors*
with guides from Jeu de Paume: from Tuesday
to Saturday at 12.30 pm
Family Tours*
Saturday at 3.30 pm
forthcoming exhibitions
28 September 2010 – 6 February 2011
z André Kertész
z False Friends / A Temporary Videotheque
z Satellite Programme, Tomo Savic-Gecan
´
* free entrance on presentation of exhibition ticket (valid on the day
of purchase only) and for members; Family Tours, by reservation
on +33 (0)1 47 03 12 41 / [email protected]
exhibitions
29 May – 7 November 2010
z Nadar, Rule and Caprice
Château de Tours
25 Avenue André Malraux, 37000 Tours
information: + 33 (0)2 47 70 88 46 / www.jeudepaume.org
Tuesday to Sunday
1 pm–6 pm
admission: 3 €; concessions: 1.50 €
15 July – 24 October 2010
z Camille Silvy, Photographer of Modern Life,
1834–1910
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place, WC2H 0HE London
information: www.npg.org.uk
forthcoming exhibitions
9 September – 24 October 2010
z Willy Ronis: On that Day
Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent-sur-Marne
www.ma-bernardanthonioz.com/fr/
28 November 2010 – 1 May 2011
z André Kertész, the Intimate Pleasure of Reading
z Zola Photographer
Château de Tours
The exhibition “Bruno Serralongue: Campfires”
is organised by Jeu de Paume and coproduced
with La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona.
Jeu de Paume receives a subsidy from
the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
It has been realised in partnership with:
It gratefully acknowledges support from
Neuflize Vie, its global partner.
Curators: Bruno Serralongue, Marta Gili and Carles Guerra
translation: Charles Penwarden/layout: Gérard Plénacoste
© Éditions du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2010
© 2010 Bruno Serralongue, courtesy Air de Paris, Paris,
Galerie Baronian-Francey, Brussels, and Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich
The artist would particularly like to thank everyone at Air de Paris
(Florence Bonnefous, Édouard Merino, Jérémie Bonnefous, Lorraine Féline,
Hélène Retailleau and Vincent Romagny).
Les Amis du Jeu de Paume contribute to its activities.
Front cover: Feu de machines, New Fabris, Châtellerault, jeudi 30 juillet 2009
Series: “New Fabris, Châtellerault,” 2009
Courtesy Air de Paris, Paris, Galerie Baronian-Francey, Brussels,
and Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich