“Firmament of metamorphoses
Where reason disorients itself
Light decomposes
Omar Khayyâm Saadi Hafiz
Oh! Constellation of the roses”
Prologue, Les poètes, Aragon

« In some ways, you become political when you do not have
chance to poetic. I believe that human beings by far
prefer to be poetic. »
Cildo Meireles, Brazilian artist
(1948 – Rio de Janeiro)

« A permanent traveller between the West and the East for the last 30 years, I am struck by the incomprehension, fuelled by mutual fantasising, which controls the relationship with others; my encounters with other nomads and other
continents have confirmed my theory. In Western countries, this vision of the rest of the world is mainly oriented by the media – bound by their role of informing and by a certain number of financial constraints -, and by the political situation which relates life in Nation States rather than that in societies. In the East, as elsewhere probably, the various forms of pressure and repression make the West seem like paradise… or hell, the other side of this misunderstood otherness.

Photoquai, by showing a reality which is not always represented in Europe or in the big international festivals, aims to help move towards clearing up this misunderstanding, by showing the Other from the best point of view, in the
best light. The Biennial event has made a place for this along the banks of the Seine, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

For this second edition, Photoquai remains an event of discovery. Dedicated to contemporary photography, it aims to 'set the trend' by showing emerging professional artists, whose works, although present in their country of origin
1, have never been shown in Europe. Behind this wish, there is no arrogance, simply the desire to offer a different image of the world, and perhaps to allow us to look in a new light at certain countries, starting with those which we
believe we know.

In the current times of globalised misunderstandings and mutual fantasising between the West and the non-West, Photoquai’s ambition is to give us another view of the world. To counterbalance the flood of images of war, poverty and horror by which Europeans are swamped, Photoquai brings to the fore the modernity and the finesse of other cultures, in order to establish a real interaction between civilisations which sometimes talk in clichés.

The fifty or so photographers on show are mainly from the non-'Western' world: Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, India, China, the Caucasus, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa, the Maghreb, Lebanon, Australia, and New Zealand…The important thing for this second Biennial event was to guarantee a harmonious and globally balanced selection of works, in terms of the notoriety of the artists on show and in terms of the geographical areas they represent. All contemporary, the photographs selected are, for the most part, ’artistic’, although some so called 'documentary' photographs closely linked to the event are not excluded.

The images shown on the banks of the Seine express something which can only be captured by this specific medium: the present moment. All the images chosen tell a story of a social or individual reality experienced in one of the countries. They allow the observer to travel elsewhere, but not just anywhere: the images are linked to a precise place, to a society, to a sensitivity which brought them about. Each and every one of them also give us another vision of modernity, subtle, deep – like when a society must move forward under the veil.

Photoquai exhibits images which were able to capture unique moments, in which the humour, lightness, poetry and artistic elegance are welcome: neither documentary, nor ethnographical, the photographs selected highlight
the sensibility of their author, without implying aesthetic posing or a tendency for excessive gravity. The themes of the second edition will come from the final selection of images, and will guide the way in which the route is organised along the river banks, from one continent to another, from one visual universe to another.

We hope that this second Biennial event will take place in continuation of the first one, and will continue beyond it: it is an affirmation of the founding principles of Photoquai 2007, whose experience it will conserve, whilst imposing itself strongly as a place for presenting young world photography, particularly non-Western, in Europe. »

Anahita Ghabaian Etehadieh,

Artistic Director of Photoquai 2009 

¹ They will already have produced more than one series of photographies.
² Formula by which Europe and the United States can be designated.