« The selection for Photoquai 2009 aims to be poetic, but could not avoid major current affairs topics. Three main themes came out of this: the environment, war and violence and identity. As Artistic Director of this Biennial Event and as an Iranian, my greatest ambition is to offer a new viewpoint on the Other, without any preconceptions, farremoved from clichés, and to participate in creating conditions for a true dialogue. As in the first edition, discovery remains one of the criteria for selecting photographers. The nine curators on the selection committee and their associate curators chose, from 32 countries around the world, previously unseen images from photographers who were sometimes totally unknown in France. The quality of the images took priority over any completeness in the list of countries. »

Here is a first guided tour through the works of some of the photographers whose images are shown on the riverbanks. All of the works in the event, whether linked or not to one of the themes discussed here, can be discovered from the 22nd September to the 22nd November.

Firstly, politics…

« The images of the Chinese photographer Lu Guang deal with one of humanity's greatest preoccupations, the environment. They tell of the other side of a society right in the middle of an economic boom. In the same register, the simple, bare, frontal portraits of Tsunami survivors taken by the Indonesian photographer Mohamad Iqbal raise the question of environmental problems in an even more direct way.

Chung ChuHa, a Korean photographer, shows the apparent lack of concern of a village located near a nuclear power station.

I compared his photos with the series of images of the Antarctic by Joyce Campbell, which remind us of the existence and the beauty of this natural wealth threatened with extinction.

On the other side, entrance to the exhibition will be via the kitsch but strong photographs by the Mexican photographer Daniela Edburg. She uses Z movie type imagery, far removed from the acidic colours used in the world of
advertising. These images look critically at western societies: 'alienation by frantic consumption'. By extrapolation, they also refer, at the other end of the journey, to the threat which this consumption represents for the earth. »

« Other subjects which are omnipresent in this selection for 2009 are war and violence. I chose to make a special place for them, without stooping to the horror of the images which are already in circulation in the West.

The Iranian Gohar Dashti shows us with humour the ordinary scenes in the life of a couple during the war.

The Lebanese photographer Rima Marun and the Israeli Tamir Sher each speak in their own way, using metaphors, of closed horizons, of hidden faces, of shattered destinies.

From my point of view, in any war there are not aggressors and the aggressed. In this ultimate act of violence there are only victims sacrificed on the altar of power and profit.

Jan Becket, born and living in Hawaii, practices 'political' photography. Right from the beginning of the Second World War, and following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, all the inhabitants of Màkua Valley were expelled by the American army who promised to return the site to them as soon as the war was over. Not only has this place never been returned to them, but the American army systematically destroyed all the sacred sites, the local species; and also
contaminated the soil for good whilst evicting the Hawaiians.

For Saïd Atabekov, a Kazakh photographer, war, whether led by the communist regime or in the name of a religion has the same effects. It is underhand and gets into every minute aspect of life until it becomes part of life.

Ilan Godfrey is South African. Personally affected by a crime, Godfrey produces his images in the tradition of reporting. He creates completely preferential relationships with those he photographs: every time, they are brought together by the story of a crime.

« Out with the old » is the title of the series of work by Reunion Island photographer Raymond Barthes, which paints the portraits of war veterans who fought in Algeria or in Indochina.

The selection from Argentina also evokes violence by referring to the years of dictatorship. The imposing buildings designed during this period as symbols of power are characterised by their large size, and their tiny windows and doors.
Santiago Porter, in his photographs of their façades emphasises the decay of these historic places, and the collapse of this symbol.

I will conclude this section on a subject and some photographs which are close to my heart, those of the Armenian photographer Karen Mirzoyan. At top speed, he follows a road from Armenia to Turkey. Through his photographs, he
evokes the terrible history of his country. Here there is no violence in the images, no clichés, just a mechanical speed which must lead to danger, persecution, exile, and the madness of war… But in contrast with this violence, his characters and his scenes of daily life give the impression of a dream. That of the reconciliation of two nations. »

« I was also sensitive to the question of identity, which is a recurrent question, particularly with certain women photographers in the selection. The new religious conflict is one of the reasons for this. The modernisation of societies,
migrations and exile, foreign seizures in other lands lead us to raise questions about identity.

The Tunisian photographer Mouna Karray and Nomusa Makhubu from South Africa question themselves tirelessly using formally repetitive images. They invent, test and question different categories of the notion of identity:
similarity and memory.

Nermine Hammam is Egyptian, with all the uniqueness from a simultaneous mix of identities this brings: she is also Middle Eastern, Arabian, African and Mediterranean. Her digital work builds up several layers of images in order to
tell several stories at the same time. These stories tell of three taboos characteristic in conservative eastern societies: religion, eroticism and politics.

Of Iroquois/Onondaga origins, Jeff Thomas sets up his collection of toys in urban areas: railways, bridges, public buildings. In keeping with an anthropological approach, Thomas reintroduces, using photography, an aboriginal presence in places where neither trace nor sign of them is any longer visible. His figurines vested with power such as 'The Messenger' or 'The Chief of Peace' are implicit claims to a cultural identity.

From British Columbia, Arthur Renwick works mainly around committed and spiritual subjects. In his series Masks, he creates a special relationship between his camera and his models, personalities from the First Nations communities.

Adrian Stimson, Blackfoot, is a member of the Siksika community. The work of this mixed-media artist – more of his work will be shown by the Canadian Cultural Centre – develops black and white sequences on the story of his 'alter
ego' Buffalo Boy. In front of the lens, in a frantic dance close to the shamanistic trance, Stimson plays the Indian with his famous bison skin, but also plays the cowboy with his Stetson. These two identities meet in the picture of the
transvestite, with his fishnet stockings. »

Social and political.

« I have given a special place to the Iranian photographer Katayoun Karami. Her photographs speak subtly to us about her status as a woman in Iran. She refers to the constraints imposed on her in the following terms: “The times when my hair was caressed by lullabies and the summer breeze nestled there are long gone… And suddenly everything goes dark … And now the only thing shining is the sheen of my own grey hair ...”

In the middle of the exhibition route, I have chosen to place the excellent series of works by the Brazilian photographer Julio Bittencourt. This series has a strong social and political content. It tells us of the windows of a building like translucent interfaces between the inside and the outside: for him they evoke isolation and communication at the same time. The building photographed was one of the most modern in Latin America. Damaged and aged, it is currently squatted by more than 460 families. Bittencourt thus explores the daily life of a temporary society. In order not to intrude, he makes life inside show through at the window and creates a series of images on social behaviour.

The Iranian Abbas Kowalski photographed a lake in the north of Iran where families spend their leisure time. Aside from the aesthetic interest of these pictures, the series subtly invites the spectator to notice men and women
dressed very differently.

Atul Loke, Indian photographer, using a documentary style, relates the somewhat precarious living conditions in a chawl, a collective house where several families live. But far from being critical, he speaks with nostalgia of these bygone times where everyone lived on good neighbourly terms. »

Now, poetry:

« There is poetry in the images of A Yin, whose every portrait is a work of art. We find poetry as much inside the yurts, as in the snowy steppes of his native Mongolia as in the deserts, as far as the eye can see.

There is poetry, too, in the night portraits of Brook Andrew. Is he tricking us by starting with stuffed birds? The human comes out of the darkness, through striking portraits.

As a third example, I would pick out, finally, the series 'The tree of the house' by the Moroccan photographer Khalil Nemmaoui. The poetry, here, comes from that familiarity we find between the house built by man and the nature around it. The photographs define intimate landscapes, as touching as a return to the country».