UNE AUTRE ACTUALITÉ, LA PHOTOGRAPHIE D'ÉVÉNEMENT FACE À LA TERREUR

Willie Doherty, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Gilles Peress
Exhibition Curator: Vincent Lavoie
The exhibition runs from January 25 to February 25, 2001

Catastrophe is uncontestably the type of event most readily projected to the forefront of the news. Media representations of terror democratise our experience of history on a daily basis. Between the exaggeration and eclipsing of horror, what value should we attribute to contemporary photography? The works of Willie Doherty (Northern Ireland), Marie-Jeanne Musiol (Canada) and Gilles Peress (United States) widen the discrepancy between the extreme poles of this antagonism. Doherty, a native of Derry who has, since the eighties, been developing a new iconography of the conflict in Ulster, represents "anti-scoops," negative events that are perfectly impervious to journalistic representation. While Doherty’s muteness introduces the hypothesis of the worst, the photographs of Gilles Peress (a member of Magnum who has been trying, since the early nineties, to renew the modes of diffusion of the image) accuses — via the expression of an ultimate violence, but particularly through the denunciation, using images shot in Rwanda in 1994, of legal flaws in humanitarian life-saving efforts. While press photographs enphasize the shock of daily events, the works of Marie-Jeanne Musiol propose a meditation on duration. Musiol has made eight visits to Birkenau to take photographs of the natural environment surrounding the concentration camp installations. Streams, ponds, woodland, pathways and other peripheral "zones" constitute her iconographic repertory. Having decided to never directly show the buildings and other architectural vestiges of the Shoah, opting, therefore, for absolute discretion, the photographer opposes all the commonplaces of "factual photography." Amid the current proliferation, in Québec and elsewhere, of photographic practices oriented toward an exploration of the intimate, of the sphere of the private, the familiar, the anecdotal and the infra-event, it is imperative to recognize those who dare — for this has apparently become a bold thing — to apprehend history, current events and the factual.

Vincent Lavoie

In 1999 art historian and critic Vincent Lavoie was awarded the Lisette Model/Joseph G. Blum Grant (for photography) of the National Gallery of Canada where he has occupied the position of Assistant Curator of Photography. This spring Éditions Dazibao will publish L’instant-monument : La photographie, du fait divers à l’humanitaire, a work inspired by his doctoral thesis (Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne).

The work of Irish artist Willie Doherty is built around one question: how to represent the conflict in Ulster? Since the early 1990s, the main body of his photographic work has called into question the media’s treatment of the "troubles" in Northern Ireland. In contrast to the traditional iconography of terror, his photographs show the scenes of past and potential confrontations, so called "sensitive" zones, borderline territories — in short, places without any overt "action." In addition to his photographic work and public interventions, Doherty has done video installations (The Only Good One is a Dead One, 1993; Control Zone, 1999) in which he broaches the problem of electronic surveillance and the anticipated threat of terrorism. In 1999 he was awarded a DAAD grant (Berlin) and carried out a project dealing with the Stasi archives. Doherty’s work has been featured in major exhibitions in international galleries and museums.

The question of the transmission of living memory underlies the work of Marie-Jeanne Musiol who has, since the end of the eighties, been developing a reflection on the evidentiary value of the photographic image. Numerous visits to Auschwitz have nourished the meditation of this artist and led to three key photographic installations: Et encore, de la poussière, 1995; Études (Quand la terre retient), 1996; Dans l’ombre de la forêt (Auschwitz-Birkenau), 1998. None of the concentration camp buldings or equipment is shown. Instead of focusing on the epicentre of the tragedy, the artist has photographed the natural environment. In addition to her photographic work, Marie-Jeanne Musiol has published several articles and limited-edition artist’s books that combine photographs and text: Le trou de l’histoire (1989), Sept ouvertures (1991) and In the Shadow of the Forest (1998). Her photographic installations have been shown in artists’ centres and public galleries in Canada and abroad.
A member of the photo stock agency Magnum since 1974, Gilles Peress is the author of several key works including Telex Iran: In the Name of Revolution, a report on the tensions that existed between the Iranian and American cultures during the hostage crisis of 1979. Peress is interested mainly in manifestations of intolerance generated by post-war neo-nationalism. "Hate Thy Brother, " a project he has been carrying out since 1970, comprises major works on the war in Bosnia (Farewell to Bosnia, 1993), the genocide in Rwanda (The Silence, 1994) and the struggle for civil rights in Ireland (Power in the Blood: Photographs of the North of Ireland, 1997). In addition to his publications, Peress has done installations, which he sees as complementary to his published pieces.