Long before discovering the works of Vania Plémiannikov, a photo had caught my eye, the black and white one of a pontoon leading to the horizon. There was so much fullness and promise in this photo that I decided to attend the opening of the photographer’s exhibition at the Galerie Philippe Sinceux. And I was not disappointed as this selection of about twenty photos, of an exceptional quality, carries the idea of « travel ».
Landscapes of dunes, seashores, palm trees, the black and white prints of these silver photos, taken from different series, spoke with one voice: the encounter with urban landscapes with an uncommon sense of detail, reinforced by controlled contrasts.
The artist makes his own silver prints. The choice of paper, the treatment of the image, the different processes of turning used are all tools available to the photographer to abstract himself from reality and find in the object photographed, an imaginary correspondence. The rendering is superb, hyper luminous as in the Sands series, realized on a particularly thick cotton paper then turned to selenium, very close to the drawing. These very graphic landscapes, suggest a travel journal drawn with charcoal, where the landscapes adopt the sensual forms of the nude.
Vania Plémiannikov offers us through these photos an invitation to a dreamlike journey, perhaps above all interior, in this mixture of different series. The photographer’s universe is strongly impregnated with this escape, represented in turn by a landscape, a silhouette, an object. Whatever the subject photographed, the search is the same: an empty frame and clean lines that translate a soothing solitude. The impression of calm and fullness I felt was amplified by the sight of the artist’s photos, and my mind wandered as I thought. The Canal sepia print, a moment captured from a London canal, immediately transported me to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film City of Lost Children. This famous pontoon reminded me of a similar pontoon in my childhood…
Humans are almost excluded from these images, except in one photo taken during the New Orleans Carnival. But it has the same effect on me, my mind wandered until I reached these streets filled with characters that you can only meet there. Strangely enough, this print was for me the most personal, the most emotionally charged because probably the closest to the photographer.
Before living in Paris, Vania Plémiannikov traveled and studied in San Francisco, but mostly in New Orleans, where he worked for a black and white fine-art laboratory. From there was born the passion, and the predilection for the argentic, which he continues to sublimate. In 2004, his urban landscapes were the subject of an exhibition at the Darkroom Gallery in New Orleans. In 2007, a new group exhibition was organized in London by the art dealer Tristan Hoare, director of the Lichfield Studios gallery. Each of these graphic creations is signed, dated and numbered, and makes up a fascinating travel journal exhibited for the first time in France at the Philippe Sinceux gallery.
The Galerie Philippe Sinceux is a modern version of the cabinets of curiosity, and enjoys mixing furniture and art objects from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Until June 5,
Gallery Philippe Senceux 22 rue de Lille, 75007 Paris. Tel: 01 42 96 47 88. Monday to Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm.
Marie-Odile Radom