The starting point of this project resides in a reflection on editorial practices in contemporary photographic creation on the one hand ; and the myth that surrounds the hotel La Louisiane, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés on the other hand. PhotoSaintGermain, with the artistic collaboration of Bandini Books, invited a dozen artists and editors to take over a hotel room for four days. In the continuity of the creative energy that springs from the hotel La Louisiane — known for its tradition of welcoming artists since the 1930s —, PhotoSaintGermain presents an intertwining of several curations, related to the image and its use — between performance, exhibition, and publication.
Stéphanie Solinas Le soleil ni la mort (chambre de lecture)
Stéphanie Solinas presents a "reading room" at the Hotel La Louisiane, to explore her new book Le soleil ni la mort (The Sun nor Death) published by delpire & co. In this book, she questions our quest for immortality by combining her photographs of a suspended moment in the Californian sky and her experience meeting with the directors of the American cryogenics company Alcor. Allowing visitors to fully experience the book's integral journey, the intimate, contiguous and protective space of the hotel room becomes a time capsule — like a comfortable echo of Alcor's thermos transporting bodies from one reality to another. In this reading room designed for 4 people, Solinas will regularly come sit in a 5th place, opening the possibility of a dialogue.
Alexia-Lazare Monduit
"Pink Flag, Wire. A Pink wounded life has a device in the hand and a record in the head. She docks in a hotel room completely out of place." From this didascalia, I immerse my photographs in a sea of dissonant musics. My photographs function like drifting reminiscences. A secret pulsation links them to the world. Through music I will try to join them into one solid block.
Alexia-Lazare Monduit (translated)
Sasori Books Love Hotel
Sasori Books is an online bookstore specialized in rare books. At the hotel La Louisiane, Sasori Books takes over room 34, and transforms it into a love hotel for a few nights. From Paris to Tokyo and back, the selection of the photographic works presented — and on sale — is exclusively dedicated to love, and intimacy. Initiated by Emilie Lauriola, this ephemeral room will take on another dimension in the evening with a — soon to be revealed — secret program of gatherings and readings on the sheets.
Un livre-une image. Collection Rushed
Do you know the photo card — the one that has accompanied photography since the beginning of the 20th century? Whether in the studio or on location, everyone has their portrait taken in painted, urban or natural settings on a souvenir medium. "A book - an image. Collection" has constituted an inventory of the photographic card practices. Assembled by thematic series, it is now a collection of albums — produced by Laurel Parker Book — that you are offered to explore: a little-known part of the history of photography.
Project of the collection : Emmanuelle Fructus
Concept of the albums : Laurel Parker Book
Curators : Nathalie Amaé & Valérie Fougeirol - Savage collective
In the mid-1970s, David Bowie decided to move to anonymous Berlin. 35 years later, Hannah Darabi and Benoit Grimbert designed an artist's book around the neighborhood of Neuköln, to which Bowie dedicated a song from his album "Heroes" (Neuköln "Heroes", 2013, Bartleby & Co.). Echoing the past of the hotel La Louisiane, which hosted musicians from the international rock scene throughout the 1960s-1970s, an original installation of this project puts photographs and books referring to Bowie's Berlin universe in dialogue.
Matthieu Nicol Better food for our fighting men
BETTER FOOD FOR OUR FIGHTING MEN is a selection of archive images from the 1970s to 1990s from a U.S. Army research and development center. Feeding the troops is a major logistical, sanitary and psychological challenge for the world's largest army. From the officers' mess to the barracks' self-service canteen, from the country cafeteri to the individual survival ration in hostile terrain, the challenge is to deliver food that will take care of the physical health and morale of the troops. These images document the experiments carried out by the nutritionists and logisticians of this "food science lab", the quality tests on panels of consumers "in situation", and studio images of the various products available on the menu.
A book (RVB Books / Too many Pictures) is published for the occasion.
A tasting session of French and American military rations will take place on the evening of November 10 in the hotel cafeteria.
Kominek Gallery Mark Steinmetz, The South Trilogy
Kominek Gallery is very pleased to present a rare selection of silver prints from Mark Steinmetz's main work: The South Trilogy. Steinmetz does not claim to be an avant-gardist or inventor. His images are part of a black and white documentary humanist tradition that he has inherited and wishes to preserve and perpetuate for the younger generation.
It is in a setting of chaos, freedom, foolish and yet precious chatter that the Hotel La Louisiane has built its identity; at 60 rue de Seine in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Since Rimbaud and Verlaine, artists, creators and travelers in search of amazement have settled in for a brief stay — among those who have lived there: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Juliette Gréco, Lucian Freud, Albertine Sarrazin, Syd Barret, Keith Haring, Quentin Tarantino and other contemporaries to whom the Hotel La Louisiane owes its discretion.
