French photographer Bernard Plossu has left his mark on the French photographic scene since 1970. His “Mexican Journey” (1965-1967), published in book form 15 years later, becomes a key work in the genre of poetic documentation. Born in Vietnam in 1945, the French cosmopolitan settled in California in the early 1970s. His photographs from this period made a decisive contribution to a renewed upswing in French photography, especially that around the magazine “Contrejour”.
From 1980 to 1985, in New Mexico, he created a pictorial style on the edge of travel photography, ethnography and, above all, autobiographical practice. After his return to France in 1986, he is considered one of the most important French photographers of his generation, which is expressed in a retrospective dedicated to him by the Centre Pompidou in 1988. Presented for the first time at the FOTOHOF, the retrospective was put together by Gilles Mora on behalf of the AFAA (Association Francaise d’Action Artistique). Gilles Mora is editor-in-chief of Cahier de la Photographie and author of important monographs on Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans. The retrospective summarises 30 years of Bernard Plossu’s photographic work. It demonstrates Plossu’s specific characteristic, the “Nouvelle Vague” aesthetic of his photographs, and offers a broad overview of the various groups of works.
The exhibition is complemented by a recent work taken in Tyrol in January 1994. At the invitation of the FOTOHOF and the Fotoforum West (Innsbruck), Bernard Plossu has completed a project on the Schmirn Valley.