© Götz Göppert

From top to bottom:

Automne, Paris, 2010
© Götz Göppert

Printemps, Paris, 2010
© Götz Göppert

Été, Paris, 2010
© Götz Göppert

Hiver, Paris, 2010
© Götz Göppert

Hiver, Paris, 2010
© Götz Göppert

18 January - 25 March 2012

German photographer Götz Göppert works for clients in Germany and France and also spends a lot of time on personal projects. A compulsive traveller, he explores the world at large and the world of those close to him with one aim in mind: to be caught unawares by beauty and the unusual. What he brings back from his trips is "an account of what surrounds [him]": a cabinet of day-to-day curiosities whose rough-and-ready appearance is compelling and which he captures in panoramic format: his "window with a view" and the only format able to render more or less faithfully what the human eye perceives. Göppert's eye flinches from nothing, and gives everything a sense of poetry in suspended animation.

"The painter has his brush, the poet his pen, the photographer a simple little camera, but he can be both painter and poet. My friend Götz was born in the mist on the other side of the Rhine. He is an artist without frontiers who fell in love with Paris, where he has lived since 1995. Look how he magnifies the ordinary and makes it desirable! I've even felt dizzy as I approached one of his photos taken from a New York skyscraper at night! An incredible, unforgettable feeling... He surprises us when he looks at the slumberng city.

I love the way he seizes the instant and transform it with a click into a painting awash with poetry. We feel a sense of warmth, speed or peace. Look at the magic of his skies, the trees silhouetted against them like Calais lace. His colour have something unreal about them, but don't imagine he uses filters: he shuns such artifice. All that's missing is Vivaldi to provide the music for these four wonderful seasons."

Yves de Petiville