‘Sommes-Nous ?’ (‘Are We?’), Is an intimate chronicle World, the fruit of a common reflection, a look focussed on our time. From production of collective, and singular term of photographers around the world, Tendance Floue continues the questioning began in his previous works, with a new perspective and a new respect.
In Paris, Mumbai, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, the North Pole and elsewhere, our different outlooks have been shaped by our personal and political concerns. We have questioned current events and our impressions have been partly influenced by History. Faces, odd encounters, urban landscapes and desolate wastelands have become the life and soul of our photography.
Man is faced with the disquieting environment he himself created and to which he endlessly tries to give meaning. He is pushed back by nature and overwhelmed by its almighty magnitude. As different worlds meet in serious or ironic circumstances, contrasts suddenly appear, and the question ‘Are We?’ remains unanswered.
While the book is revealed as a long sentence in which the photographs succeed as words, the exhibition allows new combinations of images, creating a substantially different chronology of the narrative but respectful of the book to fully adapt to space.
Info
Opening: 6.30pm 7th July
Dates: 1 July-17 September
Opening times:
Mon to Thu: 8.30am-6.30pm
Fri 8.30am-5pm
Alliance Française Dublin
1 Kildare Street
Dublin 2
Location Map
Excerpt from a text by Jean Baudrillard written for the book ‘Sommes-nous ?’ (Naïve Edition and Jean Di Sciullo Edition, Paris, 2006):
“Ultimately there is a kind of philosophy behind this « tendency ». Behind the “blur” (“flou_”), lies the intuition that it is impossible for one to grasp reality in full focus but also that it is impossible to capture the world in its fluidity, transience, and inaccuracy – and thus be a true witness. This is about capturing movement, the mode of apparition, in a sort of anamorphose and improvisation.”
In 2007, the book ‘Sommes-Nous ?’ won the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography – New-York (ICP).
About Tendance Floue
Tendance Floue is a collective of 14 photographers. It was created in 1991 and was founded upon the principle of independence, so as to guarantee the liberty of each member. Forever exploring the world against the grain of a westernized image, revealing the hidden side of exposed issues, and capturing unique moments, the collective’s force of attraction inspires the photographers to venture into unknown territories and to bring back the material which directly fuels shared photographic research projects.
Documentaries for the press, publications, exhibitions, projections, the selling of photographs, business and institutional communications: the collective opens every door and experiments with every medium of contemporary photography, without taboos. For 20 years, an indefinable alchemy of ideas and energies have made it possible, not only to create a new and original photographic language, but also to question the photojournalistic tendencies and attempt to renew the field of narration.
Beyond their individual approaches, the 14 photographers, in a collective spirit, have launched into a photographic adventure of a different order, all-encompassing and akin to performance. Comparing pictures, putting others together, forming combinations: work which is done together engenders new organic matter. Tendance Floue is a laboratory of a new kind, a collective built upon a generous and ecstatically wild friendship. Tendance Floue Photographers: Pascal Aimar, Thierry Ardouin, Denis Bourges, Bieke Depoorter, Gilles Coulon, Olivier Culmann, Mat Jacob, Caty Jan, Philippe Lopparelli, Bertrand Meunier, Meyer, Flore-Aël Surun, Patrick Tourneboeuf, Alain Willaume.
