Les plus beaux plans du monde (The Most Beautiful Shots in the World)
Exhibition designed by Patrick JEUDY for BFC Productions

This exhibition reflects a lifelong passion for film archives. The images presented here are not photographs, but they all relate in some way to photography.

They reflect the trends, developments and idiosyncrasies of photography over the last century. They have experienced the same historic upheavals; they are underpinned by the same emotions and the same joys ; they refer to the same models.

They last from three to five seconds, and their artistic and emotional quality is something I find very moving. They are what could be described as 'magical shots'.

They belong to others, and those who filmed them are mostly anonymous. Some have never been printed : they are lost in film archives on reels that are either too often or too rarely shown.

I only discover one of these 'magical shots' each year. The difficulty lies in not letting the image escape me, for it often lies hidden in amongst other mediocre or uninteresting material. But when it appears, I isolate it from the others, savouring it, testing its ability to stand alone, looking at it again and again, frame by frame.

And sometimes, the shot is just so beautiful : as beautiful as the work of a master photographer. The movements within the frame are so perfect that I keep them for myself. I make the image my own, reworking it in my own way. I choose to make it blurred or coloured, to make its movements jerky or slow so as to reveal a gesture, a fleeting character, an emotion or an unfolding drama.

It is true that war, misery and death are the recurrent themes in this exhibition. But there are also the stars that brought happiness into people's lives : Callas, Bardot, Ava Gardner, not forgetting of course Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, with their own special way of interacting with the camera, looking deep into the lens as if to say 'I'm waiting for you...'

Patrick Jeudy