Annie-Laure Wanaverbecq, artistic director of Maison de la Photographie Robert Doisneau, places Henriette Grindat in the category of, “unclassifiable photographers, marked by their non-conformity, in their lives as in their work... She had a strong personality, no doubt forged by a disability resulting from a childhood bout with polio.”

The exhibition, co-presented by the Fotostiftung Schweiz (Swiss Photography Foundation), retraces Grindat’s career. Born in Switzerland in 1923, she studied photography in Lausanne and Vevey before moving to Paris in 1948. There she met artists, writers and poets like André Breton, Michel Butor, Raoul Ubac and Brassaï, who would deeply influence her artistic vision. Her early Surrealist-inspired work was exhibited at the La Hune bookstore in 1949, and a feature in the Swiss photography magazine Camera soon followed. From these successes came the commissions that led to her celebrated series of the island on the Sorgue river in the south of France. The series would become the book La postérité du soleil, with texts written by Albert Camus and the poet René Char.

After this period, Grindat wandered the countries of the Mediterranean Basin, ending up in Sudan. Far removed from the traditional documentary style, her work still showed the mark of Surrealism. In an era where most photographers preferred a more direct, humanist approach, Grindat shot her subjects from such unusual angles—silhouettes, shadows, reflections in water—as to make her pictures border on the abstract.

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

Exhibition

Henriette Grindat
Through 29 January 2012

Maison de la photographie Robert Doisneau
1, rue de la Division du Général Leclerc
94250 Gentilly
+33 (0)1 56 01 04 86

Catalogue

Henriette Grindat, Méditerranées

Éditions Fotostiftung Schweiz 2008, 89 pages.
Texts by Sylvie Enguely and Charles-Henri Favrot.