The Archaeology of Photography Foundation presents the first Polish translation of the book by Clément Chéroux, one of the most interesting contemporary curators and critics of photography. The book, comprising seven essays, tells the story of one of the least investigated and, at the same time, one of the richest areas of photography – applied and non-artistic photography. Clément Chéroux defines this vast category, in which he includes, among others: “scientific, military, medical and ethnographic photographs, bird’s eye view shots, photographs used by artists as documentation, by architects as previews, by insurers as evidence, etc. – the list of ways to use photography is long. If press, fashion, and commercial photography didn’t constitute their own categories, they could also be added to that list.” In the texts, we find out how the spiritual photography was invented and how it was used, how ‘the amateur’ came about in photography, why the tawdry photographers were disregarded by their colleagues, what Georges Meliés knew about photographic tricks, and how much art is in Eugene Atget’s works.
CLÉMENT CHÉROUX
Clément Chéroux is a historian of photography and a conservator at the Centre Pompidou. He has curated a large number of exhibitions, such as Le troisième œil. La photographie et l’occulte (The Third Eye. Photography and the Occult; Maison européenne de la photographie, 2004); La subversion des images. Surréalisme, photographie, film (The Subversion of Images. Surrealism, Photography and Film; Centre Pompidou, 2009); Shoot! La photographie existentielle (Shoot! Existential Photography; Rencontres d’Arles, 2010); Derrière le rideau. L’esthétique Photomaton (Behind the Curtain. The Aesthetics of the Photobooth; Musée de l’Élysée, 2012); Henri Cartier-Bresson (Centre Pompidou, 2014); Paparazzi (Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2014). Clément Chéroux has also written and co-authored almost twenty books about photography.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Publisher: Archaeology of Photography Foundation; www.archeologiafotografii.pl/en
Publisher of the French version: Le Point du Jour
Polish title: Wernakularne. Eseje z historii fotografii
Original title: Vernaculaires. Essais d’histoire de la photographie
ISBN: 978-83-64443-05-3
Translation: Tomasz Swoboda
Graphic design: Marta Przybyło-Ibadullajev
Editor: Marta Szymańska
Proofreading: Julia Odnous
Print run: 600 egz.
Distribution: www.archeologiafotografii.pl; fundacja@archeologiafotografii.pl
The book was published thanks to the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Department for Culture of the Embassy of France in Poland, as part of the Publishing Support Programme BOY-ŻELEŃSKI.
October 4, 4-6.30 pm, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilii Plater 51
AN AFTERNOON WITH PHOTOGRAPHY – public talk and double book launch:
Clement Chéroux, The Vernacular. Essays in History of Photography, published by the Archaeology of Photography Foundation, 2014
Karolina Ziębińska-Lewandowska Between the document and the experiment. Photography in Polish photographic periodicals 1945-1989, published by the Bęc Zmiana Foundation & Archaeology of Photography Foundation, 2014
Event programme:
4-5 pm – Discussion between Karolina Ziębińska-Lewandowska and Adam Mazur
5-5.15 pm – refreshment break
5.15-6.30 pm – Discussion between Clément Chéroux and Krzysztof Pijarski
