Valérie Jouve
Ohne Titel (Les Personnages avec Estelle Fredet)
Ohne Titel (Les Personnages avec Estelle Fredet), 1994
C-Print, 100 x 130 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
2004-022-002
© Valérie Jouve / 2007 Pro Litteris, Zürich
b. 1964 (Saint-Etienne, FR), lives in Paris, FR
Valérie Jouve is one of a new generation of French artists who have departed from their country’s great tradition of humanist reportage, without abandoning certain of its essential elements. She photographs landscapes, particularly urban landscapes in densely populated areas. At the same time – often within the same picture – she creates portraits of people, capturing a movement, a backward glance, a laugh, a gesture. Landscape and portraiture, these two classical genres of painting and photography, are brought together in a way that presents a choreographed scene against the backdrop of an urban environment. The clash between what is documented and what is staged, between the urban framework of the city and the expressive gesture or action of the individual, opens up a fictitious space that explores the relationship between space and time, between the person and the environment, in a compelling way. Currently concentrating on film, Valérie Jouve has become firmly established in the contemporary art world.