Bernard Plossu’s Mexican Travels will be featured in a major exhibition at the Beaux Arts and Archeology Museum of Besançon through April 2, 2012, while at the same time highlighted until December 23 at the Galerie Camera Obscura of Paris. Two books by Images en Manoeuvres will also be reprinted, the 1979 Mexicain Voyage and Retour à Mexico from 1970.

When he visited his grandparents in Mexico in 1965, his work was dominated by film rather than photography, an influence that would be felt throughout his ensuing photography work and style.

His Mexican project would not only be important for the quality of his pictures, but also, as he once commented, because he was forced there to become a photographer. “In early 1966, I was lucky to be working in the jungle of Marquès de Comillas for three months. They were looking for a photographer to start working the next day, and at 20, I volunteered, but I wasn’t a photographer. I had my Super 8 camera with me, I loved to film, until the camera fell in the water and broke. So I started taking pictures. My pictures have always been influenced by my love for the cinema. I don’t think I ever would have become a film maker, destiny took over in a good way.”

Le Voyage Mexicain covers the years 1965-1966, encounters and landscapes. As he comments, “Photography evokes all those seemingly meaningless moments that we make important”.

The Besançon exhibit features 220 prints, organized in three coherent sections by curator Emmanuel Guigon. The first covers his discovery of photography: parties, marijuana, and the daily lives of hippies. The second, a selection of color prints featuring landscapes, and the third, his return to Mexico in 1970 where 100 prints reveal the difficulties of daily life for the Mexican population living on the outskirts of major cities..

The exhibition ends with the projection of a 30-minute 8mm film taken in Mexico, before his camera fell in the water.

Bernard Plossu’s work is also featured at the Gassendi Museum of Digne in an exhibition parallel to the works of American sculptor Richard Nonas. The Raw Edge / The Passage of the Viere Mountains and the Middle Mountains.

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

Exhibitions

Bernard Plossu
Les voyages mexicains
Until April 2, 2012

Musée des Beaux-Arts & d'Archéologie
1 Place de la Révolution
25000 Besançon
France
+33 (0)3 81 87 80 49

Bernard Plossu/Richard Nonas
The Raw Edge / The Passage of the Viere Mountains and the Middle Mountains.
Until March 31, 2012

Musée Gassendi
64 Bd Gassendi
04000 Digne-les-bains
+33 (0)4 92 31 45 29

Edition

Le voyage mexicain

Photographs: Bernard Plossu
Texts: Salvator Albinana, Emmanuel Guigon,
Bernard Plossu, Denis Roche
Éditions Images en Manœuvres
272 pages, 200x240mm

Le retour à Mexico

Photographs: Bernard Plossu
Texts: Emmanuel Guigon
INTERVIEW: Bernard Plossu
Éditions Images en manœuvres
112 pages, 200x240mm