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2009 EDITION

July 7th - September 13th

Jean-Christian Bourcart - Untitled title, From Campden, NJ series

Jean-Christian Bourcart

CAMDEN, NJ

Absurd, all I did was search the web for the most dangerous city in the USA. I wanted to find that strange energy given off by places where rules and social constraints have been abolished or weakened. A sense of freedom mixed with the excitement of danger. Or maybe I wanted to check that it’s still possible to reach out to others, as distant and alien as they might seem.

At the top of the list I found Camden, New Jersey, less than two hours from New York. There, I discovered the face of everyday poverty hidden behind stigma and stereotype. People are tough but their laughs touch me, and when I got mugged by a prostitute, she gave me $10 so I would not be totally stranded.

The city has two intricate, mingled, superimposed maps: the first is geometric, complete with streets, some cars, a few scattered stores and big toxic and putrid factories, the second one has tortuous pathways through burnt houses and empty lots, haunted by junkies and whores. At first I photographed crackheads in the street for $2 a session. And then I met Supreme, who would get me into houses for $20, sweettalking the inhabitants and pretending to be an art student or an undercover cop. Later, I learned that he spent 17 years in jail for murder.

I go back regularly and hand out the photos I have taken there. I have proudly become a kind of neighbourhood photographer whose production is hanging in some living rooms, above the T.V.

I’m interested in what we have in common with people from Camden. But then again, photography is always about difference. I wonder if there’s any point adding more spectacle to the spectacle. Maybe I help to provide some material evidence about the economic and social machine that swallows us up and spits us out. The question of how to determine what truth is—and then what to do with it—is at the base of every political and social conflict.


Jean-Christian Bourcart


www.jcbourcart.com

Jean-Christian Bourcart is represented by VU’ la galerie and Rapho agency in Paris and by Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York.

Courtesy Galerie VU', Andrea Meislin Gallery.

Prints by Janvier, Paris.

Jean-Christian Bourcart thanks particulary Olympus.

Jean-Christian Bourcart

Born in 1960 in Colmar, France


Jean-Christian Bourcart has lived and worked in New York since 1997.

In 2008, his illustrated autobiography was published by Editions du Point du Jour.

For the “Stardust” series (2006), he photographed the blurred image on the window in cinemas that separates the projection room from the auditorium.

During the summer of 2005, he projected images of Iraqi casualties onto American houses (“Collatéral”).

In 2004, his series “Traffic” showed New Yorkers stuck in jams. A portraitist but also a specialist in intimist subjects, he secretly photographed and then filmed the brothels of Frankfurt (“Madonnes Infertiles”) and New York's swinging clubs (“Forbidden City”, 1999) .

His work received and the Prix du Jeu de Paume in 2007, the Prix Gilles Dusein in 1999, a World Press Photo prize in 1991 and a Polaroid International Photography Award in 1984. His photographs are held in the collections of MoMA in New York, of the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, of France's National Collection of Contemporary Art (FNAC), of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, and of MAMCO in Geneva. He is represented by Galerie VU' in Paris and by Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York.