Valerie Jouve at Pompidou

At the Paris Pompidou center from June 23rd to September 13th , there is now a small, yet interesting one man show: “En Attente” (Stand-by) by Valerie Jouve.  Jouve, a french anthropologist, photographer and film maker has built this exposition  in coordination with the commissaire Quentin Bajac.  The exposition is composed of thirty pictures taken by Jouve of palestinian cities and it’s people between 2008 and 2009. Her works, though they could be taken as political views of the conflict (israelo-palestinian) or opposition to certain political takes by the respective governments, are to be taken on a more aesthetical perspective of lines, colors and parallels. Her work revolves around the way in which the human being, her “Personnages”, interact with the city around them.  The difference between the general rigidity of architecture against the contortions and elastic adaptation by people.  In an interview, she declared that her pictures “Intend to give what she feels. I do not seek to make myself understood.” Thus, the size of her life-size photographs seek to reach the viewer and create a physical and emotional relation between the two. Feeling of line and color not understanding of conflict.

The title of the exposition references to the act of posing she asks to her models but also for the “Stand-by” position that characterizes the palestinian territories she visited.  Thirty pictures might seem a slim number of objects in order to make a point. Thus, just a few pictures were enough to make me perceive the clear structural difference between the people and the surroundings.  Seeing an old man struggling to walk it’s path, crouching from leg to leg, adapting his ways against the solid and rigid wall, steadily containing and limiting his passage; the face of a young woman, her sight aiming to the sky, all her traits, the neck, the eyes, the round cheeks contrast to the rigidity of the two house roofs behind her. Seeing these two pictures was enough to get the point and the very acute eye Jouve has for contrasts and chromatic variations. Truly a brief expo I recommend. If Jouve was able to open your day’s appetite for art, believe me there’s still a lot to see at the Pompidou center.