A photo exhibition by French photographer Gilles Perrin will showcase portraits of workers across the world at the MSU Museum and allow viewers to develop a form of social exchange with those workers.
The exhibit, running at the MSU Museum until January 12, 2014, is a body of art that has about 25 years of time and effort behind it. Perrin has traveled around the world for more than a quarter of a century with his wife and collaborator Nicole Ewenczyk, taking portraits of thousands of people.
Perrin sees the large format of portraiture as a way to build the shooting as a ritual. He tries to give his subjects an identity.
“I exchange with them, I take my time, I respect them,” Perrin said.
MSU Museum Adjunct Curator and journalism professor Howard Bossen shared one of his encounters with Perrin’s work.
“I was in Paris a year and a half ago, and spent three days looking at the portraits,” Bossen said. “We first narrowed down 5,000 photos to 500, and then finally to 57.
“I like all of the portraits for different reasons. The portrait of Dopkye, the Tibetan peasant, is a very intense one.”
He says the subjects in Perrin’s photos always have very engaging eyes that engage back with you.
“That’s one thing you really need to appreciate.”
Perrin shares the same sentiments in regards to having a particular liking or connection with certain portraits.
“All those photos are beautiful exchanges and beautiful encounters, particularly the one with the old Tibetan peasant, Dopkye, with whom I had a intense exchange beyond the words,” Perrin said.
For Perrin, workers represent the society as it is. He said they are the ones who build a country, a nation.
“Howard Bossen and the former director of the museum, Gary Morgan, noticed that I had not photographed American workers,” Perrin said. “They were interested in showing another aspect of Detroit. They commissioned us (my wife and I) to work there for three weeks last year, as they knew the way I work would promote the people who work for the reconstruction of their town.”
The exhibition, Detroit Resurgence, is about the rebirth of a generation. The essential idea and meaning behind it grew out from the initial project: An Extraordinary Document of our World.
“One thing Gilles’ work focuses on is places in transition. He usually looks at transition where ways of life are disappearing; for instance, he photographs primitive agriculture. However, Detroit wasn’t photographing the end of something, but the beginning,” said Bossen.
Lora Helou, acting director of the MSU Museum, talked about how the portraits in both exhibitions give you a sense of how work is intertwined with our identity.
“There’s a common thread in what Perrin does: He tries to help us see people, what they do, and how that makes a life for them,” Helou said.
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