Histoire des avant-dernières luttes @ Air de Paris

With his 2010 solo exhibition @ Jeu de Paume still recent in our memory French photojournalist (but not really) Bruno Serralongue is back to Air de Paris for a new solo show starting… yesterday!

In fact, as part of a triple exhibition (or 3 exhibitions for the price of one if you want) Mr Serralongue’s “Histoire des avant-dernières luttes” opens the new art course for the 13e arrondissement gallery together with Aaron Flint Jamison & Jean-Marie Appriou.

 Histoire des avant-dernières luttes is a selection of photographs from his 3 latest series… South Sudan 2011, on the official commemoration of the country’s independence; Kosovo 2009, still in preparation, on the construction of a new country in Europe; and Florange 2012, the working title for a series on the industrial dispute at Arcelor Mittal in France.

Without officially working for any media Bruno photographs are too much of a portrait of today’s cynic world managing to very often be present at some of the most important events in human history. Triggering a reversal of the usual state of affairs, he renders visible things which otherwise would be no more than media prompts. Despite the overt construction of his images, however, his intention is neither simply formal or even visible. His way of seeing focuses very much on the veritable historical nature of the events he covers, on the contingency of events which are not self-contained but rather, as he puts it, “endless constructions of possible conflicts via the resolution of the preceding ones”.

Here he borrows and tweaks the title of Siegfried Kracauer’s unfinished historical writings, History: The Last Things Before The Last, in images that reveal the full complexity of things and their history: things that are paradoxically intangible in that they reference the endlessly postponed end of history.

Probably the must-see photographic exhibition of this new year running until October 21st. More info this way.