In this part, The Monochrome Photography, the curator has kept the direct positives, the monochrome matrix and their prints. The interventions made on the negative, the interventions made on the prints and the non-silver emulsion photographic processes.

The direct positives include daguerreotypes, the ambrotypes and the ferrotypes. To the old daguerrian processes we find in opposition the recent projects by Grant Romer. Just like those by Marc Osterman with the ambrotypes.

The monochrome matrix and their copies concern the prints on direct darkening, the negative paper and the salted paper, the glass negative and the traditional soft negative all the way to its contemporary evolutions.

For the direct darkening or through developing, we find the images by Nègre and Marville confronted with those by Dan Estabrook.

We also find with “La Tour Saint Jacques” by Édouard Baldus a confrontation between the paper negative and the glass negative. We equally have a glass albumin by Hippolyte Bayard and a collodion plate by Gustave Le Gray with a mirror image by France Scully Osterman.

In front of the glass plate by Eugene Atget, negative and positive, an albumin paper by Dan Estabrook after a glass plate.
 
The album by Étienne-Jules Marey shows the soft negative and the instantaneity. To illustrate the evolution of the print in time, we find three prints of the same image by Henri Cartier-Bresson. One “vinage” print made at the time of the shot, a “late” copy made later under the author’s supervision or under his name, and a press print that we usually find in the catalogs of the auction sale houses with the (misleading) caption “tirage d’époque (vintage print), artist’s seal on the bac”. But the exhibition also shows that an artist can go back to a print at a different time. That is what the prints by Patrick Faigenbaum show, a version dated 1985 that is confronted with a 2011 version that he calls “picture shape”.

The work on the negative concerns here the mask and the retouching, the photo montage and the scratching. We find a surrealist print by Pierre Boucher, a scratched negative by Robert Frank and a large print by Shirin Neshat. In this last example, the negative has not been scratched, but the artist has written on it verses of the Koran.

The work on prints can be multiple. We find alternately bended colors, mordançage, protective layers, coloring. But also written, the photo collage, the “photo cut out” or even solarization.

The exhibition starts off on a nice bend in gold by Eugène Atget, followed by declinations made by artists like Denis Brihat and Jean-Pierre Sudre.

A tribute to Eadweard Muybridge with a chemigram by <strong<Pierre Cordier.

Two tests in wax by Gaspar Tournachon ‘dit’ Nadar juxtaposed with an image by Joel Peter Witkin. A solarisation by André Vigneau and a photo cut out by Hans Peter Feldmann.

In the chapter of the photographic processes’ non-silver emulsion prints, we find the pigment processes and the iron salt processes. An image by Francis Jalain illustrates the processes on charcoal, a bichromate rubber by Robert Demachy, a resinotype by Gérard Tracandi and images on platinum by Clarence H. White, Irving Penn or Manuel Alvarez Bravo.

On Thursday May 26th at 6 PM the exhibition presentation by Anne Cartier-Bresson, exhibition curator, accompanied by a keynote speaker.
 
References

“L’objet photographique, une invention permanente”
Actes Sud Editions, “Photo Poche” Collection Text by Anne Cartier-Bresson and Françoise Ploye, 208 pages. On sale end of April 2011.
 
“Le vocabulaire Technique de la Photographie” under the direction of Anne Cartier-Bresson Marval/Paris-Musées,  496 pages 245×290mm
 
Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr
 
  
“L’Objet Photographique, Une invention permanente”
April 20 – June 19, 2011
Maison Européenne de la Photographie
5-7 rue de Fourcy
75004 Paris