PHOTO:Marc Pataut

The work of Marc Pataut is structured around the formulation of research projects which address those political and human issues which often stand outside art institutions’ parameters. Through his photographs, the artist sets forth a link between different collective and individual practices, bringing to light the co-existence of different realities, shining a spotlight on the most disadvantaged groups as he explores the ways of opening up photographic expression and the category of the artist upon sharing the camera in some of his series.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Jeu de Paume Archive

The exhibition by Marc Pataut at Jeu de Paume presents a corpus of around 15 photographic series, some of which are being exhibited for the first time. The artist’s work explores the individual’s relationship both to themselves and to society. His pictures reveal faces, bodies, affiliations and life stories. Linked to specific sites and regions, his projects grow organically over long periods and are nourished by an accumulation of personal and collective experiences. The exhibition features a selection of his photographic essays produced between 1981 and the present day, it is an artistic proposition focused on his art works and the evolution over time of their political relationships to society, space and territory. In the early 1970s, Pataut studied under sculptor Étienne-Martin at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and his photographic practice was strongly influenced by the latter’s ideas and approach. In the 1980s, after a brief stint at the agency Viva, Pataut devoted himself to photographic essays in which the human and political dimension was of central importance. Pataut’s experimental approach is based on collaboration and shaped by the particular context he works in. His working method is inextricably linked to a particular field of activity or social situation, or to the history of a place and or to a period. His experimental venture at the Aubervilliers day hospital in 1981 paved the way for this process. Working part-time as a “nurse-photographer”, he gave cameras to a group of children suffering from psychotic disorders. In the children’s photography, Pataut discovered a relationship to language and the body that impressed him greatly. “I understood that a portrait was not only a face, that photography involves the body and the unconscious, something other than the eye, intelligence and virtuosity. The work at the day hospital taught me that you can photograph with your belly, that the portrait is the relationship between bodies – how I place my body in space faced with another body, at what distance”. In 1986-87, he undertook a series of photographs of his own body. He produced a set of eleven close-ups of his stomach to express the violence suffered by other bodies. He titled this work “Apartheid” and presented in it two forms: on billboards in the town of Le Blanc-Mesnil and in framed prints displayed in the town hall. At the same time, he produced Mon corps, a new series made up of a multitude of photographs. In 1989, the artist began experimenting with portraiture. The exhibition explores this aspect of his work non-chronologically, juxtaposing works from different series and in different formats. “Aulnay-sous-Quoi  ?” (1990-91), a project produced with a class of fifth-form students from Aulnay-sous-Bois (north of Paris) and based on secondary school pupils who were members of the resistance and were condemned to death in 1943; “Emmaüs” (1993-94), portraits taken from various distances of Emmaüs companions in Scherwiller, Alsace; “Humaine” (2008-12), portraits of three inhabitants of the town of Douchy-les-Mines; and, finally, a series of portraits produced with six patients and two nursing assistants from the Victor-Hugo psychiatric day centre in Béziers, entitled “Figurez-vous… une ronde” (2012-16). In 1990, with Gérard Paris-Clavel, he founded Ne Pas Plier, an association committed to the struggle against the neoliberal society and its advertising culture through rallies, images and words in the public space. In 1996–97, they collaborated with Médecins du Monde, which was seeking to highlight the difficulty of accessing healthcare for the homeless. The project involved the participation of homeless people who were salaried sellers of La Rue (a magazine that no longer exists), and focused on their activities in the public space.  They photographed their environment and the resulting images were published in the magazine. It led to a long friendship with one of them in particular, Antonios Loupassis  an architect of Greek origin, whose photography is exhibited here. In 1994 and 1995, Marc Pataut photographed the inhabitants of Cornillon, a wasteland and the site of the future national stadium in Saint-Denis, outside Paris.  “In November 1993, the site of Cornillon, in the Plaine Saint-Denis, was chosen for the Grand Stade where the 1998 World Cup was supposed to take place. Before becoming the highly publicised site of a global event, this 25-hectares lot was the territory of a small number of people, who were gradually evicted before the building works started and whose huts were demolished when the stadium was opened. I understood that they were saved by their relationship to space, the sky, plants and nature. They maintained an intimate relationship with a vast territory”. The result “Le Cornillon-Grand Stade” series was published as a book, and the works were also exhibited at documenta X in Kassel, 1997. At the request of Manée Teyssandier and Philippe Salle, two people in charge of the association Peuple et Culture Corrèze (2001-02), Marc Pataut met various men and women who, each in their own way, defined the “pays de Tulle”, and subsequently interviewed, photographed and filmed them. This investigation, entitled “Sortir la tête” was exhibited in Tulle and the surrounding villages, then in the exhibition “Des territoires” at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2001.

Info: Curator: Pia Viewing, Jeu de Paume, 1 place de la Concorde, Paris, Duration: 18/6-22/9/19, Days & Hours: Tue 12:00-21:00m Wed-Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-20:00, www.jeudepaume.org