Portraits d'artistes choisis par Bernard Lamarche-Vadel
à travers la collection de la Maison Européenne de la Photographie

Having asked Bernard Lamarche-Vadel to make a selection according to his taste from the collection of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Maison invites both the connaisseur of photography and the witness dedicated to contemporary art.

"Ever since photography was invented and the indispensable role of the primitive played by Nadar, the portrait of the artist has attracted all of the medium's masters and that in a consistent way throughout the twentieth century, often expressed in the memorable form of exclusive views representing the peculiar head that creative artists have. Many important names in the history of photography have chosen the portrait of the artist as their special field of meditation. Man Ray, Brassaï, Cecil Beaton, or Claude Cahun with his strange and magnificent series of self-portraits,Gisèle Freund, and, more recently, Yussuf Karsh, Paul Facchetti, Alice Springs, Tahara, Schlomoff or the great Trivier, amongst many others, have gained their place in the collective memory by their singular interest in artists'heads and feature among those works that the museum has to account for.
An artist's head represents at any one time the crucial moments of his art, the will to be it and the power to show it; even when - and in a way - particulary when asleep. Newton has probably taken the most profound portrait of Warhol - by rendering the latter's sleep." Bernard Lamarche-Vadel

Bernard Lamarche-Vadel