After a beautiful and extensive retrospective in Grenoble (2009) that remained too confidential, Patrick Fagenbaum presents at the Museum de la Vie Romantique in Paris an exhibition whose title is misleading, Paris near and far (1972-2011).

Jean-François Chevrier curator explains in the text of the catalogue cum book, Near and far here qualifies a geography and a biography. The 81 prints have little to do with previous works at the heart of which the reflexions and themes that marked out his works until now stay the same.

Patrick Fagenbaum has rarely privileged outdoor landscape instead he favor the cloistered space of portraits and cities. A series that started in Bremen (Germany) at the end of the 90's and goes on with Barcelona (Spain), Tulle (France), and Sardinia. At the roots one finds a continual preoccupation with different ways of approaching his works.

The common thread of this series of pictures are the unity of settings since they all are in Paris and the near suburbs, it is close and far geographically, and near and far to his preceding works.
The biographical pictures are in two parts, the first is from 1972 which has never been seen
and show places chat have gone « the court yard of my building » on the rue Michel Chasles and the dressmaking shop of his mother Suzanne, and her last portraits in 2010 in the evening of her life in the closed space of her bedroom.

For the geography the first quarter of which starts « Quai de Loire » before spreading to the four main points of the compass and returning « Quai de Loire », going from the Parvis of Notre Dame the central point kilometer zero, and then Rungis, The St Denis Basilica, the terraces over looking the Seine in St Cloud or St Germain en Laye or else Montreuil, Orly, Nanterre. As a Parisian, Patrick Fagenbaum takes the risk like most photographers of recording fragments of Paris and the suburbs without any specific projects and coherence that could form a body of work.

For this exhibition Jean-François Chevrier gives unity and cohesion to this parisian territoryboth familiar and unknown, a voluntary direction among many, away from the « documented » toward « an analogical picture of the sight (Veduta) and still life », inspired by the last realization of the photographer in Lussurgiu a village of Sardinia. We understand that this exhibition and the catalogue cum book that goes with it have nothing to do with the works of other photographers , and goes towards a more personal vision, concerned almost auto biographical, more artistic.

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine@orange.fr

Paris, proche et lointain 1972-2011
September 27th 2011-February 12th 2012
every day 10AM-6PM
except Monday and Holidays

Musée de la Vie romantique
Hotel Scheffer-Renan
16 Rue Chaptal
75009 Paris
+33(0)1 55 31 95 67

Publications

Patrick Faigenbaum
Paris proche et lointain 1972-2011
Préface de Daniel Marchesseau, Directeur du Musée de la Vie romantique

Paris une esquisse biographique
Texte de Jean-François Chevrier
Historien et critique d'art
Éditions Paris-Musées
Relié 146 pages