For the past eight years, the city of Rennes in France has held a photography exhibition at the Hôtel de Ville and in the La Courrouze and Maurepas districts of the city. Past editions have included large-format prints of works by Sebastião Salgado, Klavdij Sluban, Steve McCurry, Gilbert Garcin, Sabine Weiss, Martin Parr and Claudine Doury, among others.

This year, 45 photographs will be on display until November 4. Entitled Moscou Plages (Moscow Beaches), the images explore the portrait through two opposing series shot by the photographers Alessandro Albert & Paolo Verzone. They put 20 black-and-white prints of vacationers on European beaches and resorts in Brighton, Tylösand and Rimini, face-to-face with color photographs of Muscovites during pivotal moments in their history: 1991, 2001 and 2011. In one way or another, these confrontations clearly show, on the one hand, the cultural differences in Europe and, on the other, the regime changes in Moscow.

In 1991, the attempted August coup had just failed. It was a historic moment. “Only afterward did we realize what we had just lived, seen and done.” By 2001, the USSR had become Russia. “Everything had changed, society had been disrupted, and we told ourselves that we had to go back. We made a new series of portraits, almost always against the same walls and in the same places as ten years before. Then in 2011, we felt the need to go back, and took pictures with the same set-up as the previous times.”

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr

"Mouscou plages"
par Albert et Verzone
45 large-format photographs
Until November 4, 2012
Place de l'Hôtel de ville
Quartiers La Courrouze et Maurepas
35000 Rennes
France