Rivages

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Bruno Chalifour

Rivages by Harry Gruyaert Textuel (Paris), 2003/104 pp. 43 (10"x15") color illus.)/$65.

Harry Gruyaert is to 35 mm color photography what Robert Frank is to black and white. Since he saw John Szarkowski's Eggleston show at MoMA in 1976, he has developed an astonishingly idiosyncratic style in color. He is the oldest of a trio of exceptional Magnum color photographers along with Miguel Rio Branco and Alex Webb. The three of them used to ally Kodachrome film and llfochrome prints to produce images that were the results of an elaborate aichemy of saturated colors and vision. In 1999, for a show commissioned by the city of Dijon, Harry Gruyaert gave up llfochrome for digital prints. The first examples (Bale de Somme, Fort Mahon Plage) could be seen in February 1999 in New York at the AIPAD show. As was the case with Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka, Gruyaert's meeting with publisher Robert Delpire turned out to be a crucial one: It was Delpire who published the photographer's first books.

A member of Magnum since 1982, Gruyaert started focusing on long-term self-assigned projects. Morocco that became a book in 1990 and has been working for several years in Egypt where, Gruyaert says, the challenge is "to organize the visual chaos" of Egyptian cities.

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Rivages ("Shorelines" in French) is also the title of the exhibition on show until September 14, 2003, at the Rencontres d'Arles (France). On Rivages, Francois Hebel, who curated Gruyaert's show, wrote: "This exhibition offers a new reading of the photographer via his visual signature. Realizing that chance had led him to photograph shorelines all over the world, he set himself the difficult task of choosing photographs relating to the horizon. Totally event-free, the result only confirms his striking talent."

With 43 full-frame 10"x15" images printed in Italian format, Rivages stands as an excellent catalogue of the exhibition as well as an very good introduction to the photographer's work and a rare pleasure for the eye--Morocco only printed at 7,000 copies has been out of print for years now. It is a rare opportunity to enjoy a creative approach to the esthetic of color photography.

Other books:

Lumieres blanches. Paris: Delpire/National Center of Photography.

Morocco. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1990.

Made in Belgium. Paris: Delpire, 1990.

See: http://www.magnumphotos.com and http://www.rencontres-arles.com