The Fondation HCB presents Londres, a new selection of photographs by Sergio Larrain (1931-2012), reworked by the artist himself. In the winter of 1958-1959, the Chilean photographer traveled to the British capital, producing a collection of photos in which, sensitive to encountered scenery and light, the artist’s imagination exceeds both the subject and frame of the image.

In London, during his four-month residency, he produced his first important essay thanks to a grant from the British Council. Photos from the series may not have been published by the press of the time, but during this trip Larrain made a stop in Paris where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, allowing him to join the Magnum Photos agency.

The photographer describes feeling the demise of the “capital of an ancient and vast colonial empire”, as evidenced by the melancholy and many shades of gray in the photographs. Ghostly figures captured late in the night, in the fog and cold of London, give these photos a dream-like dimension that is proper to Larrain’s work. In London as in Chili, Larrain captures the essence of the subjects he photographs against an almost mystical background.

Curation
Agnès Sire, Artistic Director

The title of this show, Soleil Cou Coupé (Let the Sun Beheaded Be), is borrowed from Martinican writer Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), whose poetry inspired Gregory Halpern during his time in Guadeloupe. As the fourth laureate of the programme Immersion, a French-American Photography Commission by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, the American photographer will exhibit at the Fondation HCB his work from the 2019 residency. Fascinated by the history, place, people, and vernacular of the French overseas department, Halpern created a collection of photographs that is both enigmatic and alert to reality.

Returning on the island over three successive trips, sensitive to what the place might have to offer, Halpern’s approach reveals surrealist inspiration, in particular the “Caribbean surrealism” embodied by Aimé Césaire.

The history of Guadeloupe, inherently connected to European colonization and the slave trade, can be observed today across many commemorative monuments spread out over the territory. Conscious of that history, the photographer’s approach is one of sensitivity, curiosity and receptivity. Halpern is drawn to contradiction and the incongruous, and he places the natural beauty and the troubling history of the archipelago side by side, forcing viewers to resolve for themselves this compelling mixture of images.

Through portraits and the representation of everyday objects—the vernacular—Halpern detects, in different forms, the scars of Guadeloupe’s past.

Curation
Clément Chéroux, Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Photography Curator at MoMA, New York, in collaboration with Agnès Sire, Artistic Director at Fondation HCB.

Biography
Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1977, Gregory Halpern teaches photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology (New York). He has degrees in history and literature from Harvard University and California College of the Arts, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. His work has been the subject of a number of publications: Harvard Works Because We Do (2003), A (2011), East of the Sun, West of the Moon (in collaboration with Ahndraya Parlato, 2014), ZZYZX (2016), Confederate Moons (2018) and Omaha Sketchbook (2009/2019). He is editor of The Photographer’s Playbook (Aperture, 2014) along with Jason Fulford.