Exhibition
Photo Elysée, which showcases a wide range of techniques from the history of photography, acquired an automated photo studio a few years back. Since then, the museum has offered the public the opportunity to photograph themselves and, if they wish, to leave their portraits, thus creating a collective archive (over 2,000 snapshots have been collected to date).
The artist, Christian Marclay, invited by the museum to immerse himself in the Photo Elysée collections in 2021, chose to explore these thousands of faces recorded by the museum's Photomaton. With him, ECAL photography students explored, scanned and metamorphosed the preserved prints. The idea of the project was to appropriate the analogous images and to open them up to new experiments in order to tell new stories. Visitors are invited to take a seat in front of the various installations and let themselves be carried away by new visual sequences born of varied explorations ranging from simple mechanics to the latest digital tools.
In a closed place in an open space, protected only by a curtain, the photo booth is situated somewhere between the private and the public realm. On an adjustable stool to regulate the height of your head, having rearranged your hair for the last time, concentrated before the flash, seated in front of the mirror, curtain drawn, you are both present and removed from the world. The photo booth offers a confined space for free expression, where you can smile, make faces, pose for the camera... You're emancipated, but only when the machine is watching you. Whether individually or in a group, this place becomes a playground and questions identity.
Christian Marclay (USA/Switzerland, 1955) has been developing a unique body of work since the late 1970s, exploring the juxtaposition of sound recording, photography, video and film. A multimedia artist, his work is at the crossroads of several genres, from acoustic performance to still and moving images, and collage.
Like a DJ, the artist fragments, assembles and reassembles vinyl records, record covers and other objects to superimpose auditory or visual effects. The Centre Pompidou in Paris recently presented a major retrospective of his work.