Lieux communs, figures singulières. Paris: Société Des Amis Du Musée D'art Moderne De La Ville De Paris, 1991. Paperback, 136 pp. 24 x 27 cm. First Edition. Published to accompany an exhibition that ran at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris from October 24,1991 - January 12, 1992. Cover with flaps.
Condition: fine. Firm book block. Clean pages. Absolutely minor wear on the front cover's upper and lower corners and at the lower part of the spine.
Outstanding selection of photographic work by Marc Blondeau, Stuart Brisley, Jean-Marc Bustamente, Craigie Horsfield, Mike Kelley, Ken Lum, Jean-Luc Moulène, Jean-Louis Schoellkopf, Beat Streuli. Seven to nine b/w and/or full-color photographs for each artist, introduced by a one-page article written by the artists themselves or based on a brief interview. Text: French & Englishby Jean-François Chevrier.
As the title suggests, the exhibition focused on two distinct, antithetical photography models: an ontological realisme vs a critical semiology. 'The initial hypothesis,' curator Jean-François Chevrier writes, 'that in every representation of a human figure, a group of figures, or a social identity (...) an implicit choice is made: either to grasp the essence of being or to describe a social role, to present a mirror image or to stage a dramatic tableau.'