LEVALLOIS.- Since the launch of its new format in 2008, Photo Levallois has become the reference event dedicated to photography in the Hauts-de-Seine department, being the only substantial project dedicated to photography in this area. In 2008, the festival was supported by the French medias so that it was decided to expand its exhibitions programme in 2009 with strong, new and always high quality proposals. Furthermore, the convivial spirit has been preserved: several actions encouraging exchanges between the audience and the festival will be organized such as workshops (with the Photo Club), meetings with the artists.If the new artistic director has decided to focus on emerging photographers, each edition features at the same time a special solo show dedicated to a yet acknowledged living photographer (Benoît Gysembergh in 2007 and Rip Hopkins in 2008).

Xavier Zimmermann (born in 1966), a former resident in Villa Medicis, is one of the French references in contemporary photography. The exhibition, called “L’envers du décor” (meaning the “flip side of the coin”), brings about an inversion of our perception of the world, where time is like suspended to a fictional reality, or, say, distorted. The exhibition will feature photographic, video and sound works, many of them being new, specially produced for the show.

Anne-Laure Maison (born in 1979), a former resident of Le Pavillon (Palais de Tokyo’s residence for artists) will exhibit her “ Tableaux d’intimités” (literally meaning Paintings/Canvas of Intimacies). In this series, the artist builds ghostlike architectures with different (sizes) pictures of windows laid like mosaics on black grounds: each window is a shining source in which the walker fancies projecting himself once night has fallen…