BACK TO BLACK EXHIBITION

East Timor, 2006 - Guatemala, 1982 - Chile, 1974 - Chechnya, 1995 - Paris, 2020 - Afghanistan, 1999 - Georgia, 2017 - Romania, 1989 - Quebec, 1994 - Greenland, 2020 - Italy, 2015… Back to black = 97 works from 1974 to the present day, 20 photographers-authors. 

Back to black is a collective exhibition bringing together the twenty members of the MYOP agency around the practice of black and white and largely giving voice to photographers. The exhibition was conceived and shown for the first time on the occasion of MYOP in Arles 2021, Henri Comte Gallery. 

In an agency that claims the diversity of writing, black and white remains a common culture, a point of reference, roots and a source of inspiration. 

The practice of black and white, through the independence and freedom of treatment that it provides, through the wealth of printing techniques, represents an ideal field of experimentation, often very artisanal, often solitary. The laboratory is a place of introspection. A place where the technique allows to get as close as possible to the rendering desired by the author. 

Texts accompany this exhibition. Each one testifies to a visceral attachment to a practice which in turn makes it possible to offer a refuge in the intimate during upheavals of life, a reappropriation of the medium when weariness sets in, a strong and ambitious choice on subjects that photographers find it important to them a personal way of seeing things differently. 

“LIGHTS AND SHADOWS” WORKSHOP

Oan Kim is co-founder of the MYOP agency which he created in 2005 with Guillaume Binet. His photographic work, between fiction and documentary, pays particular attention to the treatment of light. His practice of black and white photography allows him to play with shadows, lights, materials. At the limit of abstraction, his work plunges the viewer into a universe tending towards the fantastic. 

After a short time for discussion around the works of Oan Kim, the students are invited to experience light and shadow - the very essence of photography. 

Divided into small groups in the darkened exhibition hall, the students create images using light systems, objects, sheets of paper, Indian ink and charcoal. 

Collective or individual, tiny or grandiose, complex or minimalist, his compositions will allow a playful approach to certain major principles of photography: light as an essential element, the notions of framing and composition, the image created from of an element of reality etc. 

WORKSHOP “REPORT FEEDBACK”

The exhibition Back to Black highlights the link that MYOP photographers maintain with black and white but also with the profession of photojournalist. Stimultania proposes to extend the questions around this profession and the social subjects present in the exhibition (Afghanistan, confinement, migration). 

In small groups, using a set of photographs from the exhibition, documents, keywords, press articles made available, the students are invited to reconstruct and interpret an event. Like a team returning from a report, they will find themselves faced with a set of elements to assemble, understand, enrich and then lay out. But the world of the press is harsh, there is no room for reporting in traditional newspapers: the objective is therefore to create a fanzine * (four to eight pages maximum), free, experimental and committed object. 

The workshop is adapted to the level of the students. The challenge is not so much to know the real events processed or to have advanced skills in graphics and editing! The workshop promotes collective work, interpretation and creativity. 

The fanzine as well as the discussions that will result from the work of each team can be finalized in class in order to deepen what was outlined during the workshop. 

FOR FURTHER