An exhibition of Claudine Doury - curated by Jean Loh
An exhibition of the Dali Photo Festival
An Exhibition at Dali Festival curated by J.Loh
An exhibition at Dali Festival curated by J. Loh
An exhibition at Dali Festival curated by J.Loh
An exhibition at the Dali Festival curated by J. Loh
Among the international exhibitions at the First Edition of the Dali Photo Festival, I chose to present the following works besides their absolutely certain photographic value because especially of their “transporting” themes that will bring the Yunnan spectators to a wildly exotic and enriching trip around the world:
In the first pavilion:
French woman photographer Claudine Doury from Agence VU’ – winner of World Press Photo, Leica Award and French most prestigious Prix Niepce, presents her sensible and delicate treatment of the teenagers at a summer camp in Russia – ARTEK – documented in three successive visits 1994, 1999 and 2003, almost like a diary written there with Natasha & Sergei, Sasha, Igor and Tania, etc… With her tender, intimate and soft tone color, she narrates the daily activities, the play and rest and socializing of the universal teenage experience through anxiety and excitement without ever falling into voyeurism.
South African Brent Stirton from Getty Images, invited by TOPS International, will show a spectacular portrait of the last tribes of the Omo Valley in West Ethiopia, from the body-painted and Kalashnikov-equiped Karo herdsmen to the bizarre plate-lipped Mursi women, most certainly rarely seen in China. 5-time winners of the World Press Photo and a United Nation Award recipient for his works on environment and HIV, Brent’s concern here is simply to question the “sustainable preservation” of a traditional, ecological way of life in the wild, part of a project on worldwide disappearing cultures in the midst of globalization.
In the second pavilion
Frenchmen Francis Latreille, also a World Press Photo winner and a knight of the French National Order of Merit, is basically passionate about the effect of global warming on our planet. He is presenting here on invitation of TOPS Interntaional, his outstanding reportage on board of the sailboat TARA that let itself trapped on a giant piece of ice to then drift with the moving ice for 2,500Km over 506 days in the Arctic Ocean. Francis has captured the beauty of ice-formed waves and the Arctic long winter nights, the camaraderie of the crew on board, while alerting us on the imminent danger of climate change.
Belgian photographer Eric Mannaerts, on invitation from the Dali Festival, will bring his 20-year Morrocan Journey to the Yunnan audience. A series of classic black & white photographic tribute to Cartier-Bresson and Bernard Plossu, Eric also depicts his nostalgia for this enchanting country as he went in search of the traces of the Beat Generation writers on the beach of Tangier, or let himself mesmerize by the trance-inducive gnouas music.
In the third pavilion
Thai photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom from Bangkok, and represented by VU’ la galerie, will present his surprising and iconic Pink Man, an off-beat comic character dressed in pink pushing his pink supermarket caddie, in an out-of-the-context environment, be it in the heavenly Bali Island or right in the center of a European city. A harsh critic of the excesses of today’s consumerist society with a touch of Thai humor, Manit is actually deeply concerned by peace and communication between the peoples in the world.
Peace is also at the heart of French Vietnamese photographer Alain Buu, who risked his life in Afghanistan to bring back this incredibly beautiful rendition of Joseph Kessel’s novel The Horsemen. Tired of the image of a country torn by endless years of conflict Alain mounted a horse and went searching for the celebrated buzkashi, the traditional horse racing game close to polo, played by nervous and aggressive horses mounted by ragged yet noble horsemen. What we have is an enchanting illustration of Kessel’s book about a wounded chapendoz (horsemen) on his long journey home, in the midst of the unimaginably quiet and peaceful beauty of the Afghan landscape.
