partners exhibition organised by

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EXHIBITION ORGANISED BY
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EXHIBITION ORGANISED BY
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EXHIBITION ORGANISED BY
Elliott Erwitt
American, born in 1928
Founding father of modern photography, Elliott
Erwitt does not joke with humor. Dogs, movie stars,
children and heads of State, so many subjects for
his innovative eye which captures with an infinite
tenderness the innocence of the world.
Born in Paris in 1928 to Russian parents, Erwitt spent his
childhood in Milan, then emigrated to the US, via France,
with his family in 1939.
As a teenager living in Hollywood, he developed an interest
in photography and worked in a commercial darkroom
before experimenting with photography at Los Angeles
City College.
Practical information
Contact
Quartier Libre SIG
Pont de la Machine 1
1204 Geneva
022 420 75 75
Free entrance
Opening hours
Monday – Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Saturday – Sunday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Guided tours for children as young as 10 years
starting August, 30th 2016
During the exhibition and outside school holidays,
guided tours are available for school visits
and Maisons de quartier
Bookings
022 420 75 75 or [email protected]
Days/hours
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday at 9.15 a.m.,
10.30 a.m., 2.00 p.m.
Wednesday at 9.15 a.m., 10.30 a.m.
Duration
45 minutes
Group
Minimum 10 – maximum 25
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Recommended age
From age 10
Group care: one guide
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Elliott Erwitt. New York City, USA, 1998
© Elliott Erwitt / Magnum Photos
He moved to New York in 1948 and exchanged janitorial work for film classes at the
New School for Social Research.
Serving in a unit of the Army Signal Corps in Germany and France in 1951 he undertook
various photographic duties.
Erwitt met Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker (Farm Security
Administration) when in New York. The latter hired Erwitt to work for the Standard Oil
Company and subsequently commissioned him to undertake a project documenting
the city of Pittsburgh.
Between documentary reportage and
art photography, the work of Paolo
Pellegrin blurs tracks without ever losing
sight of reality. He wants to be a witness
of our time, of its beauty as much as
of its brutality.
Paolo Pellegrin
Italian, born in 1964
In 1953 Erwitt joined Magnum Photos and worked as a freelance photographer for
Collier’s, Look, Life, Holiday and other luminaries in that golden period for illustrated
magazines.
Paolo Pellegrin © Kathryn Cook
Paolo Pellegrin was born in 1964 in Rome. He
studied architecture at L’Università la Sapienza,
Rome, Italy before studying photography at l’Istituto Italiano di Fotografia also in Rome.
Between 1991 and 2001 Pellegrin was represented by Agence VU in Paris. In 2001
he became a Magnum Photos nominee and a full member in 2005. He was a contract
photographer for Newsweek for ten years.
Pellegrin is winner of many awards, including ten World Press Photo awards and
numerous Photographer of the Year awards, a Leica Medal of Excellence, an Olivier
Rebbot Award, the Hansel-Meith Preis, and the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award.
In 2006, he was assigned the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography.
Martin Parr
English, born in 1952
Definitely abandoning black and white, Martin Parr
is taking colour pictures to create series between
provocation and eccentricity. With a smile on his face,
he enhances banality with an acerbic look on
our society.
Martin Parr was born in Epsom, Surrey, UK, in 1952. His
interest in the medium of photography was encouraged by his
grandfather George Parr, himself a keen amateur photographer.
He studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic from 1970
to 1973 and since that time, he has worked on numerous
Martin Parr. Braga, Portugal, 1999
© Collection Martin Parr / Magnum Photos
photographic projects. He became a full member of Magnum
Photos in 1994. In recent years, he has developed an interest in
filmmaking, and has started to use his photography within different conventions, such
as fashion and advertising.
His work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe and was awarded numerous
times.
Martin Parr was Guest Artistic Director for Rencontres d’Arles in 2004. He is also
curating photo events, such as the New Typologies exhibition within the New York
Photo Festival in 2008, or the Brighton Photo Biennial in 2010.
He has developed an international reputation for his innovative imagery, his oblique
approach to social documentary, and his input to photographic culture within the UK
and abroad.
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In collaboration with Magnum Photos, “PICTURE YOURSELF”
exhibition at Quartier Libre SIG offers an insight on portrait and
self-portrait from the mythical images of Philippe Halsman,
Elliott Erwitt, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Steve McCurry and
Bruce Gilden. The exhibition invites to an experience that forges
links between collective memory and the vision of these six masters
of contemporary photography. The photo booth, a machine creating
forced and anonymous portraits, becomes here an integral part
of the exhibition. Adopting the style of Magnum’s photographers,
it allows people to be immortalised “in the style of ...”. Each visitor
reveals to himself, being both the model and the artistic author of
a single portrait that he can keep and share.
Framed, printed, downloaded, placed on virtual walls or not, portraits have
invaded our lives such as to set up our daily pace. Gone is the time where
photography – front facing, three quarters, bust or standing – incarnated the
achievement of a lifetime.
It succeeds then to painted portraits the oldest traces of which date back
to antiquity. Between sacred and profane, they are representations of faithful
individuals worshipping their gods with open eyes and beatific faces. Eclipsed
in the Middle-Age, painted portraits revived during Renaissance. They lasted
until the beginning of the twentieth century, expressing the occasionally
offbeat vision of the artist, fully symbolized by the famous phrase of Picasso
to his model: “You will end up by resembling your portrait!”
New York City, USA, 1997
© Bruce Gilden / Magnum Photos
Replacing the pictorial portrait, the invention of photography changed that
all. From now on everyone wants to have their portrait. Even modest villages
are hosting photographic studios. Itinerant portraitists roam the remotest
countrysides. The portrait is of social importance, for all classes. Its function?
To reveal a status and highlight key moments. Nothing could be more serious.
The operation itself is no laughing matter. Static or formal, these portraits
require laborious posing time.
Self-portrait, Matterhorn, Switzerland, 2012
© Collection Martin Parr / Magnum Photos
With the evolution of technology, the portrait becomes more natural. Images
diversify to better correspond to the face of humanity in how it is different
but universal. Photography also becomes more affordable. From the public
field of official, academic, or even ethnographic portraits that accompany
the development of the means of locomotion, we enter from now on into the
private sphere with amateur photography.
Over time, the face is “outfaced”, with a close-up, a blur, a staging. The
skyrocketing rise of individualism in postmodern societies promotes the cult
of self-esteem. The portrait becomes a mirror, my beautiful mirror, everyone
having their eyes riveted on their own reflection. What is then happening with
the part of reciprocity between the eye of the photographer and his model’s
one? It might maybe exist in the widespread use of sharing. I “take” a picture
– I remove, I withdraw, I steal – to circulate at best my image and create a
dialogue, an emotion, a reaction.
Philippe Halsman
American, born in 1906, died in 1979
Staging people to reveal personality, that is
the signature of Philippe Halsmann. A sparkling
portraitist who never stops to experiment.
Thus he invented “jumpology” by which he forces
his leaping subjects to drop their mask.
Philippe Halsman was born in Riga, Latvia and began
his photographic career in Paris. In 1934 he opened a
portrait studio in Montparnasse, where he photographed
many well-known artists and writers including Andre Gide,
Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, and Andre Malraux, using
Philippe Halsman. 1954.
an innovative twin-lens reflex camera that he designed
© Philippe Halsman / Magnum Photos
himself. Part of the great exodus of artists and intellectuals
who fled the Nazis, Halsman arrived in the United States with his young family in 1940.
Halsman’s prolific career in America over the next 30 years included reportage and
covers for every major American magazine. These assignments brought him face-toface with many of the century’s leading statesmen, scientists, artists and entertainers.
His incisive portraits appeared on 101 covers for LIFE magazine, a record no other
photographer could match.
A discreet adventurer, Steve McCurry is touring
the world looking for stories to tell. Some of his
photographs have the chiaroscuro of the masters’
paintings. They all express the humanity of
a photographer with a rare sensitivity.
Steve McCurry
American, born in 1950
Halsman began a thirty-seven year collaboration with Salvador Dali in 1941 which
resulted in a stream of unusual “photographs of ideas”. In the early 1950s, Halsman
began to ask his subjects to jump for his camera at the conclusion of each sitting.
These uniquely witty and energetic images have become an important part of his
photographic legacy.
Steve McCurry by Ahmet Sel. 2002
© Steve McCurry / Magnum Photos
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, McCurry studied film
at Pennsylvania State University, before going on to work
for a local newspaper. After several years of freelance work,
McCurry made his first trip to India, exploring the country
and subcontinent with his camera.
It was after several months of travel, that he crossed the border into Pakistan where
he met a group of refugees from Afghanistan. They smuggled him across the border
into their country, just as the Russian Invasion was closing the country to all western
journalists. Emerging in traditional dress, with full beard and weather-worn features after
weeks embedded with the Mujahideen, McCurry brought the world the first images of
the conflict in Afghanistan, putting a human face to the issue on every masthead.
Since then, McCurry has gone on to create stunning images over six continents and
countless countries. His work spans conflicts, vanishing cultures, ancient traditions
and contemporary culture alike – yet always retains the human element that made his
celebrated photograph of the Afghan Girl such a powerful image.
Born in Brooklyn, Gilden started working in 1969 on his first longterm personal project photographing in Coney Island. From 1975
to 1982, Gilden photographed the Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
A master of street photography, Bruce Gilden grabs
on passers-by to “flash” them closely. Always on
the search, the urban space is his hunting ground
and faces are his trophies. They reveal a social reality
that we often refuse to confront.
Bruce Gilden
American, born in 1946
McCurry has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards and his work
has been exhibited worldwide.
Bruce Gilden. New York City, USA, 1998
© Bruce Gilden / Magnum Photos
In 1984, Bruce Gilden landed for the first time in Haiti where he
would return for eleven years. In 1996, his book Haiti, won the
European Publishing Award for Photography. After the earthquake
of January 2010, Gilden visited Haiti three more times “to keep the
light burning”.
Over the years, Gilden, who joined Magnum Photos in 1998, has travelled extensively,
working on commissions and producing other long personal photographic projects in
India, Russia and Romania, always returning to the streets of New York City, where he
had been working since 1981. His work culminated in the publication of Facing New
York (1992), and later A Beautiful Catastrophe (2005).
In 1994, Gilden lived in Tokyo, Japan and started a penetrating photographic project
on Japan’s dark side. His images of the “Yakuza”, the Japanese Mafia gangs, were
published in the book Go (2000).
In 2008, Gilden started photographing the first segment of his series on foreclosures
in America, “No Place Like Home” in Florida. He continued his project in Detroit,
Michigan (2009) Fresno, California (2010), and in Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada (2011).
In April 2013, Gilden was awarded a John Guggenheim Fellowship.
Harold Lloyd, 1953 © Philippe Halsman / Magnum Photos