Paris Shows: Tendance Floue & Vanessa Winship

Tendance Floue

I’ve spent some time searching without success for the first piece that I wrote about the French collective ‘Tendance Floue‘, a group of photographers who aim to explore their individual creativity in a dialogue together outside the normal limits of commercial media practice.

I think it was perhaps around five years ago, when their work was included in the Arles Rencontres and also gained an ICP Infinity Award that I became aware of the group on-line, and somewhere around the same time I saw a show of their work I think in the fringe festival during the Mois de la photo in Paris. Possibly it was in an brick arch under a bridge across the railway lines out of the Gare d’Austerlitz at Les Frigos, but I can’t be sure.

Tendance Floue (TF) literally means a fuzzy or blurred tendency or trend, and if the work of the photographers in the group does sometimes become a little too experimental for my liking, blur is not necessarily to be taken literally, but more as expressing a spirit of being prepared to explore outside the boundaries of particular  conventions – such as that of sharpness – that the commercial practice normally demands.

I was slightly surprised to learn that TF is celebrating its twentieth anniversary, with the original five photographers now grown to a dozen. And celebrating in some style with shows in five galleries in the Marais in Paris from Feb 5-22nd.

• Baudoin Lebon : Thierry Ardouin, Flore-Aël Surun and Patrick Tourneboeuf
• Galerie Les filles du calvaire : Pascal Aimar and Mat Jacob
• La galerie particulière : Gilles Coulon and Philippe Lopparelli
• La petite poule noire : Bertrand Meunier
• Hôtel de Sauroy : Denis Bourges, Olivier Culmann, Caty Jan and Meyer.

In the French press release that accompanies the show there is a handy map so you can plan a walk around all five (they include one, La petite poule noire, on the Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire I’ve not visited.)

If like me you are unlikely to be in Paris before Feb 22nd, there is plenty of work to explore on the TF web site, though some of it isn’t that easy to find. Perhaps the web site too is deliberately fuzzy. I also found that to see the English version of some pages I needed to load the French version first.

Not Only Rare Birds Sing

And if you can get to Paris, another current show not to be missed is ‘Not only Rare Birds Sing‘ by Vanessa Winship, at Galerie VU’ until 19 March 2011.  You can see a selection of her work on the Agence Vu web site, as well as on her own site, where her blog shows her making the prints for this show.

Galerie VU’ used to be in the Marais too, but has now moved west to the 9th arrondissement, in Hôtel Paul Delaroche, 58 rue Saint-Lazare. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday from 2-7pm and you can leave your Velib handily close by at number 62. Do London galleries tell you where to leave your Boris Bike on their invitations?