PARIS, FRANCE.- Galerie Hors Sol presents Tina Mérandon - Vertigo 1, on view through April 31, 2007. The Exhibition presents a set of portraits of political celebrities - or the main actors on the public stage - made for the daily paper Le Monde's special page, 'décryptages-portraits' between 2005-2006.

What does a politician - male or female - offer a photographer when the latter asks him/her to be him/herself? The Art of the portrait is that of a research into the motions of one's soul. These portraits, created in very little time, show the reverse side of personalities which are locked up by the media. The question is to give a true picture. But do those whose pictures are constantly fabricated still possess their own image? Tina Merandon tracks down the precise moment when this image falls down. The picture will be that which will most strongly bare them, because it will no longer be a reflection of power, but of a given person. Bringing them to sit for the picture as if it were a kind of surrender shows more clearly how they observe their own power and how they let the photographer bear witness to it.

Here these pictures are rather the result of exhilarating interplay between two kinds of power. On the one hand, the politicians' will - because they can only convince with the help of a sharp sense of the image they convey - and on the other hand the power of the artist - not that of the media - which may only be put into practice with a sharp sense of the balance to be found between what he/she sees, what he/she must show, and what he/she may show - not forgetting that he or she is involved in the power games at play.

An essential counterpoint is the representation of power, with the face of sundry famous intellectuals : wavering between resignation and helplessness, they are no longer able to check their leaders' will to power.