“Maryland, USA, 2011. Empty and rotting buildings dot the landscape of North Avenue, the major street that runs East to West through Baltimore. They are remnants of the subprime mortgage crisis, some now taken over by drug dealers. Many homes are unable to find buyers, even for a few dollars. Rehabilitation programs are unable to convince the middle-class to invest these neighborhoods where the crime rate remains high. In harmony with the white of winter, only the snow and the trees seem to offer a little poetry and life to these scenes made silent by the cold.”

Ronan Guillou

In the early 2000s Ronan Guillou undertook his first personal photographic investigations of American urban spaces, conducted alongside his fashion and advertising commissions. The United States gradually became Ronan’s main subject and has led to a veritable odyssey in colour across the America of this new millennium. Avid for experience, the photographer allows luck and chance encounters to direct his narrative, probing and observing this fascinating country where fiction and reality are uniquely bound.

Structured by both documentary intent and exploration of form, Ronan’s images express an affinity with the American iconographic tradition, of which he offers a personal reinterpretation forged during numerous and lengthy travels.

Ronan Guillou has been nominated in 2009 at the Prix HSBC pour la Photographie, in 2008 at the Prix Nièpce and laureate in 2007 of the Biennale des Agents Associés at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs

Since 2005, Ronan’s work has been shown in personal and collective exhibitions in France and the United States.

Ronan Guillou is born n 1968 in Bouar (Central African Republic), he lives and works in Paris.

REPRESENTATION
http://www.phom.fr/

EXHIBITION
BIENNALE DES CREATEURS D’IMAGES
Docks – Cité de la Mode et du Design
34 quai d’Austerlitz
75013 Paris
France
May 31 - June 30, 2012
Everyday, 10 am to 8 pm. Free entrance.

Séverine Morel
severine.morel@lalettredelaphotographie.com