Les Rencontres d'Arles Rencontres d'Arles: expositions, stages photo /exhibitions, photo workshops.

‘Instead of our special ‘fashion’ bond, which dates back more than twenty years, we have chosen to show communal apartments in St. Petersburg, following on from her exhibitions on Africa, Siberia and Cambodia.‘

Christian Lacroix

KOMMUNALKA

My very first days in these communal apartments in St Petersburg were absolutely perplexing, and I realised it would take me several stays and an inside contact to get to the bottom of these weird, closed-off environments.

Over several years I photographed the place and the daily life of the residents – and especially of Natacha, who set the rhythm of my visits. Implicitly, and without my realising it, she became the main strand in my narrative and in my desire to be there and stay there. She embodies the quintessence of these communal worlds and the magnetism of a city that has been gnawing at me for so many years. How many times have I stood simply hypnotised by these disturbing visions of light and shade?

Who spoke to me of ghosts? Who told me that at night in St Petersburg you can see the invisible and dream of the unutterable?

Françoise Huguier

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/francoise.huguier/

Françoise Huguier is represented by the Rapho Agency, Paris.

Exhibition devised with Christian Caujolle.

Exhibition produced with the backing of Dupon Digital Lab.

Françoise Huguier

Born in Thorigny, France. Lives and works in Paris.

An inveterate traveller, Françoise Huguier has a passion for Africa which has found expression in two books, Sur les Traces de l'Afrique Fantôme (Maeght, 1990) and Secrètes (Actes Sud, 1996). Her solo exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in 1998 was À l'Extrême, representing several years' work in Kwazulu-Natal, in South Africa. In 1991 she discovered the photographers Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibé – the latter won the International Photography Prize in 2003 – and helped make their work known. She then organised the first Biennial of African Photography in Bamako in 1994.

Winner of a Villa Médicis Hors les Murs award for Sur les Traces de l'Afrique Fantôme, she received the accolade again in 1993 for En Route pour Behring (Maeght), an account of a lone journey through Siberia. The photos making up the book were shown in many galleries and festivals and won her a World Press Award. Deciding to spend several years in St Petersburg, she made a film in 2007 on a community apartment block there; the subsequent book, Kommunalka, was published by Actes Sud in 2008.

In 2006 she had returned to her experience as a prisoner of the Viet Minh in Cambodia, and her J'avais Huit Ans (I Was Eight Years Old) was published by Actes Sud that same year.

Since 1983 she has been photographing haute couture workshops and shows twice a year. Actes Sud published her Sublimes in 1999.

All her books have been the subject of exhibitions around the world.

EXHIBITIONS