For their new exhibition entitled Wanderings, Polka Gallery presented Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama’s, Light Memoirs, William Klein’s, The Wedding of the Century, Prune Nourry’s Holy Daughters and Paris Imperial by Massimo Siragusa.

In Memories of a Dog, 2004, Daido Moriyama wrote “Photographs are the footprints of light and memory, they make up the history of memory. That is the myth of light.”

Memoirs of Light follows the itinerary of this vagabond photographer who, “after fifty years on the road, used only his memory and his souvenirs as guides.”. Born in Osaka in 1938, Daido Moriyama lived through war, Japan’s defeat, the American military’s occupation and the coming and going of the “economic miracle”.

This history turned him into a leader of this new photographic movement that broke with tradition and turned Japanese photography into one of the world’s most artistically creative, while in France, blinded by the dictum of a small handful of elites and agency failings, they failed to recognize the importance of this revolution. The Provoke years (1960 to early 1970) brought a new photographic language, notably through important books such as Farewell Photography (1972) or Light and Shadow (1982).

Parallel to this exhibition, Polka Magazine ran a major portfolio in their latest issue.

In anticipation of the upcoming confrontation <em<William Klein / Daido Moriyama at the Tate Modern of London (October 2012 – January 2013), Polka Gallery is also presenting in its Wanderings, The Wedding of the Century, featuring William Klein’s coverage of Prince William’s April 29 marriage to Kate Middleton. Contrary to the 8000 journalists covering the event in front of Westminster Abbey, William Klein went behind the scenes, delivering exclusive coverage of this event in his own style, “physical and spontaneous”.

Other Wanderings include Prune Nourry’s Holy Daughters, an artistic project where sculpture, video, photography and performance art collide. Paris Imperial by Massimo Siraguso was produced by Polka Gallery. For this, the photographer donned a tourist’s point of view and traveled through this spring’s sun drenched city on top of a double-decker bus, transforming the cityscape into a model with unexpected proportions.

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

Wanderings

Through July 30
Polka Galerie
Cour de Venise,
12 rue Saint-Gilles
75003 Paris