In 1975, the exhibition "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" marked a turning point in landscape photography. Organised at the George Eastman House in Rochester by William Jenkin and Joe Deal, it brought together Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel and Bernd and Hilla Becher. All of them take a neutral and frontal look at peripheral areas that have been modified by human activity.
Although "Another look at Man-Altered Landscape" is not a literal continuation of the original project, the exhibition does take stock of a situation that has become critical, through the intersecting views of Edward Burtynsky, Eric Tabuchi and some twenty international photographers.
A mass grave of used tyres in California, a plastic dump in Nairobi, a merchant marine cemetery in Bangladesh... Presented in partnership with the Canadian Cultural Centre, four alarmist large formats by Edward Burtynsky capture the drifts of the anthropocene era.
From his Atlas des Régions Naturelles documenting French vernacular architecture, Éric Tabuchi's "Camouflage" series offers an ironic counterpoint: six plant forms mask industrial ruins, questioning land use.
Two committed visions with which those of Xavier Beaumont, Elizabeth Bourne, Garry Bowcott, Bill Leigh Brewer, Owen Davies, Fabien Dendievel, Ted Diamond, Alexander Dumarey, Chris Faust, Andy Feltham, Jacques Gautreau, Stéphane Goin, Paul Hamelin, Andrea Kunstle, Markus Lehr, Chris Leslie, Ian Lindo, Doug B. Richardson, Marco Rizzo, Alexis Toureau, Paul Turner, and Avard Woolaver resonate.
Galerie Catherine & André Hug
Founded in 2000 in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Galerie Catherine et André Hug has chosen photography to explore the medium's mode of expression. The gallery selects classic documentary artists, or those who prefer a fictional form, whose work questions reality, the narrative potential of the image, or the exploration of the dream that inhabits man.