PARIS.- Galerie Miranda hosts Baudoin Lebon, 'guest gallery', in its space located at 21 rue du Château d'Eau in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. The two entities share the gallery's walls, taking the opportunity to share and reveal the projects and convictions of the two gallery founders, each reputed for their eclectic choices and defence of strong signatures; united by a deep connection with Australia.
Rare prints from the 19th century by ‘orientalist’ photographer Pascal Sébah (1823-1886, Armenian-Syrian), founder of a legendary photography studio in the Pera neighbourhood of Constantinople, in dialogue with contemporary images by German photographer Patrick Bienert (1980, German), from his Armenia series produced for Louis Vuitton as part of its Fashion Eye collection of photo books.
Patrick Bienert was born in 1980 and grew up in Munich, Germany, where he studied photography at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie and the Munich University of Applied Sciences until 2006. His photography project East End of Europe about a pro-European generation in Georgia was published in 2020 by Kahl Editions. Other bodies of Bienert's work include Asmara (2013), in which he photographed both the modernist architecture of Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, from the period of the Italian colonisation, and the city's current inhabitants; Clothing Trade, a project about the second-hand clothing industry in Tunisia (2018); and Banks of Dnister (2019), for which he followed the Dnister river along its route through Moldova, the breakaway state Transnistria and Ukraine, portrays the youth culture and the landscapes in the post-Soviet states. His work has been exhibited at OFR Galerie in Paris; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany; Amphithéâtre de Carthage, Tunisia; and Store Studios, London. He has published several books including the co-authored Wake Up Nights (2017), East End of Europe (Kahl editions, 2020) and Happy Springs (Patrick Remy Studio, 2023).
Series Armenia, 2022-2023
The exhibition brings together a series of images taken across Armenia in 2022 and 2023 by photographer Patrick Bienert and published in 2024 by Louis Vuitton in the Fashion Eye collection. The journey begins in Turkey and then, turning his back on the neighboring nations of Georgia and Azerbaijan, Patrick Bienert crossed the country from north to south to follow Lake Sevan, a true inland sea, in order to reach Yerevan. On the road, he explores this small nation of 3 million people, surpassed by its diaspora of 9 million, but whose ancient culture is evident in the numerous monasteries and churches that dot the territory. Through his explorations, he encounters serious faces of all ages, blurred by the conflicts of the past and the uncertainties of the future.
SÉBAH, Pascal (works proposed par baudoin lebon)
Born in 1823 to an Armenian mother and a Syrian catholic father, Pascal Sébah worked particularly in Constantinople and Cairo. Sébah is a leading figure in orientalism in photography. In 1857, he opened a photographic studio in Constantinople on Sokaği Street, where the Austrian Post Office was located and which was an extension of Post Street. He called his studio “El Chark Photographic Company”. This main street in the Pera district being very commercial, he quickly opened a new studio at 232 Grand Rue de Pera. In 1860, he moved to 439, next to the Russian embassy, and employed a Frenchman named A. Laroche to run the workshop. Early on, Sébah's skills as a photographer earned him a reputation in Istanbul, and in 1859 the Société Française de Photographie in Paris awarded him a medal for his work.
Sébah's career coincided with the growing interest of Europeans in the "Orient", exotic and fascinating. Constantinopole photographers, such as the Abdullah Brothers and then Sébah, sold images of the ancient ruins of the surrounding area, portraits and local people in traditional costumes, to the city's tourists. Sébah became known for his well-organized compositions, careful lighting, great attention to detail and the excellent quality of printing by his technician, A. Laroche. Sébah worked in collaboration with the painter Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910). He photographed models dressed in rich costumes and the painter then used the photographs as the basis for his famous orientalist oil paintings. Sébah presented the album Popular Costumes of Turkey at the Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873, which earned him a gold medal awarded by the organizers. That same year, Sébah opened a branch in Egypt.
