ART CITIES:Paris-Broomberg & Chanarin
Tackling politics, religion, war and history, Broomberg & Chanarin prise open the fault lines associated with such imagery, creating new responses and pathways towards an understanding of the human condition. Language and literature play an increasing role as material for their multifaceted work, from the philosophical underpinnings in Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer to the sacred texts of the Holy Bible itself, both books having been refashioned and recreated by the artists in their own ambiguous, combatant image.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Centre Pompidou Archive
The series “Divine Violence” by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, recently entered in the Collection of the Centre Pompidou and is on presentation at the Galerie de Photographies. This radical, provocative installation consists of 57 frames, each corresponding to a book in the Bible, and brings together its 724 pages. It compares the patent violence expressed in the Bible with violent images from today’s world. While visiting the Bertolt Brecht archives in Berlin, Broomberg & Chanarin discovered a remarkable artefact: Brecht’s personal bible. The object caught their attention because it had a photograph of a racing car stuck to the cover. Inside the pages they discovered that the German playwright had used his bible as a notebook; pasting in images, underlining phrases and making notes in the columns. This was the inspiration for their own illustrated Holy Bible, which they realised first in book format (published by Mack, 2013). They themselves took the 1611 King James Bible, illustrating it chapter by chapter, with no explanations or comments, by inserting prints of photographs from the Archive of Modern Conflict. This Private Collection, which was founded in 1991, and contains tens of thousands of vernacular images produced by the press or amateurs is the Photo Collection with the most abundant archive content on the violence and absurdity of war. On each page of text, the two artists highlight in red a passage reflecting the image chosen. Through this very simple, implacably effective process, Broomberg & Chanarin confront the sacred text with anonymous photographs from the Archive of Modern Conflict, emphasising the icons and visual stereotypes of violence. The breadth of its subject (the Bible) and its radical method make Divine Violence the magnum opus of the two artist-editors. The exhibition also reveals their sources of information: educational and propaganda books illustrated with photographs denouncing violence or, in contrast, glorifying it. Some of these books from the 1920s and 1930s contain the work of thinkers who used editing and photography to support and disseminate their ideology, whether Conservative or progressive.
Info: Curator: Florian Ebner, Centre Pompidou, Place Georges-Pompidou, Paris, Duration: 21/2-21/5/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-21:00, Thu: 11:00-23:00, www.centrepompidou.fr
