As part of the events surrounding the ongoing exhibition “Denise Colomb aux Antilles: De la légende à la réalité, 1948-1958” (September 29-December 27, 2009, Jeu de Paume/ L’Hôtel de Sully) [see previous post Photography Exhibition: Denise Colomb aux Antilles], Filigranes Editions has released the corresponding book/art catalogue Denise Colomb aux Antilles (2009).
Artipedia.org presents a thorough review of Colomb’s work, describing her ethnographic impulse, humanist photojournalism, and the allure of travel, as well as her surrealist and exoticist gaze, sense of illustration and color, and experiments with reticulation (web pattern prints). The following are excerpts from the review:
In 1948, at the recommendation of Aimé Césaire, Denise Colomb joined Michel Leiris on a mission to the West Indies. However, working with the famous ethnographer soon proved impossible. Denise Colomb carried out her assignment with absolute freedom, and her subtle way of capturing expressions and gestures, based in a sense of connection with the subject, was incompatible with the ethnographic, documentary approach. She photographed Martinique and Guadeloupe at a time of hope and reconstruction, as the two islands were developing the departmental status voted for them in 1946. Colomb described the social reality, the practices and customs shaped by an economy based on the twin monocultures of sugar cane and bananas.
[. . .] In Colomb’s work natural landscapes of mangroves, riversides, hills (mornes) and forests both dry and wet sit side by side with human cultivation. The abundant tropical rains combined with heat to produce a dense and varied vegetation of coconut palms, vanilla trees, hibiscus, mangroves and redwood, and in her writings the photographer dwells on the wild and sometimes surreal beauty of nature. Denise Colomb shared this sense of wonder at the variety and profusion of tropical nature with André Breton, for whom “Surrealist landscapes are resolved in this land where no aspect of nature has been controlled.”
For the full review of Colomb’s work, see http://artipedia.org/artsnews/exhibitions/2009/09/21/jeu-de-paume-presents-denise-colomb/
For book information, see http://www.paris-art.com/catalogue-art.html
