LES BELLES IMAGES (Special edition)
Thomas Mailaender
- Book coming with a vintage original photograph
- from press agency
- handmade glazed ceramic frame
- Variable size
- 100 unique pieces
- with a signed and numbered certificate
- Currently on show at RVB BOOKS
- 95 Rue Julien Lacroix 75020 Paris
Regular Edition here
Produced especially for the Artist's solo exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, this series brings together over one hundred vintage original photographs found by the artist at flea markets and through online marketplaces. The images came from press agencies that received prints on a daily basis, and were used for reproduction, with typed captions on their reverse sides describing the event or action photographed in a few sentences. These “semi-precious” images are set in unique frames manufactured and enamelled by Mailaender and his assistants. In constant correlation with the image depicted, the frames deliberately include fingerprints, a nod to the amateur practices valued by the artist. “Les Belles Images” celebrates the voyeuristic, offbeat iconography of the images included, which had a special status in the press at the time. Known colloquially in French as the rubrique des chiens écrasés (“crushed dog section”), the series refers to the human interest stories often tinged with irony featured in the back pages of newspapers and magazines. What Mailaender calls the “little great moments in our history” – an earthworm race, a one-eyed cat, a snake casting, an invisible dog – allow the artist to visually reinvest these images by reappropriating them and giving them new narratives. Extracted from their original distribution networks, the images acquire a particular resonance, taking the form of a kind of archaeology of photography, but their place on the museum walls also celebrates the visual plurality of press photography in the second half of the twentieth century.