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Jane Hartley @USAmbFrance 3 h
Heartbroken to visit this makeshift memorial to Sean & Brodie Copeland, tragically killed in #Nice
https://www.gofundme.com/2eb85b99
Jane Hartley @USAmbFrance 3 h
We join @UCBerkeley, and the Leslie family & friends to mourn the life of Nicholas Leslie, tragically killed in Nice
http://www.ktvu.com/news/175477464-story
Communiqué du MDFDE :
Chers membres du MDFDE, chers amis internautes,
C’est avec une immense tristesse que nous présentons nos sincères condoléances aux familles et amis des victimes dont les familles de nos compatriotes Sean & Brodie Copeland et Nicholas Leslie après l’attentat meurtrier sur la Promenade des Anglais à Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) dans la nuit du 14 juillet 2016, et dont le dernier bilan à ce jour s’élève à 84 morts dont 10 enfants, 74 blessés dont 28 encore en réanimation auxquels nous pensons très fort en priant chaque jour pour qu’ils se rétablissent au plus vite et dans les meilleures circonstances.
Face à tant de haine et de tragédie humaine, plus déterminés que jamais malgré les difficultés, nous redoublons donc d’efforts pour réaliser notre beau projet MDFDE/Paris-NYC16 #MDFDEJeSuisLadyLiberty130 soutenu par l’Ambassade de France à Washington D.C., le Consulat de France à New York, la Mission permanente de la France aux Nations Unies, le Député Frédéric Lefebvre, le Barreau Franco-Américain de New York, BZH New York et l’Union Alsacienne de New York à l’occasion du 130ème Anniversaire de la Statue de la Liberté et le 100ème Anniversaire du National Park Service (NPS) les 26-27-28 octobre 2016 à New York en hommage aux 2 996 victimes de 9/11 dont 4 Français, nos 130 victimes des attentats du 13 novembre 2015 à Paris dont une jeune étudiante californienne, nos 49 victimes du 12 juin 2016 à Orlando, Florida et maintenant nos 84 victimes de diverse nationalité dont plus d’un tiers de confession musulmane, mortes pour la Paix et la Liberté de célébrer entre parents et amis, entre petit copain et petite copine, entre Français et étrangers, ce tragique 14 juillet 2016 à Nice, France que nous n’oublierons jamais…
En attendant de se retrouver à New York cet automne, si vous allez en France cet été, n’hésitez surtout pas à vous rendre à Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) pour cette magnifique Exposition honorant le photographe Auguste Bartholdi, devenu sculpteur, et sa mythique Statue de la Liberté continuant à nous réconforter, à nous faire espérer une vie plus juste et saine pour tous…
Fidèlement vôtre,
Elisabeth Jenssen
Luce Lebart, un œil neuf sur la photo ancienne
LE MONDE | • Mis à jour le | Par Claire Guillot
Dans la photo ancienne, paradoxalement, ce qui intéresse Luce Lebart, c’est « ce qui est jeune, neuf, innovant. Ce qui résonne avec le contemporain ». L’historienne au prénom prédestiné (lux, « lumière » en latin, matière première de la photographie), racontera cet été à Arles l’histoire des images de la statue de la Liberté, devenue support de pub et objet de merchandising avant même d’être construite.
Depuis son arrivée à la Société française de photographie (SFP), en 2011, Luce Lebart s’est employée à dépoussiérer les lieux. Cette association vénérable, qui a vu passer, depuis 1854, les plus grands noms de la photographie, est surtout connue pour son trésor de guerre : sa collection de centaines de milliers de tirages, négatifs et objets, classée monument historique.
Manger une photographie
Non contente de répertorier, de réorganiser, de nettoyer ou de numériser, la nouvelle directrice des collections a invité des artistes en résidence. Le premier, Thomas Mailaender, a organisé une performance consistant à… manger une photographie. « A première vue, cela peut sembler un geste gratuit, explique Luce Lebart, amusée. Mais, en réalité, il questionne le statut de notre collection, qui est inaliénable. Et notre liberté. »
De fait, bénévoles et spécialistes se sont arraché les cheveux face à ce défi : que peut-on manger sans risque ? (Le choix s’est porté vers un tirage à l’albumine, à…
EXPOSITION
Dans le cadre du festival Les Rencontres d’Arles
Lady Liberty, La Fabrique Photographique d’une Icône
Du 4 juillet au 11 septembre 2016
Musée Départemental Arles Antique
13200 Arles
France
http://www.rencontres-arles.com
LADY LIBERTY : La fabrique photographique d’une icône
« Défi colossal scellant l’union de l’art et de la technique, emblème de l’Amérique, symbole de liberté et de démocratie, la statue de la Liberté est l’un des monuments les plus photographiés au monde. Son auteur, le français Auguste Bartholdi, était lui-même photographe. Il abandonne cependant rapidement ce medium pour la peinture et surtout la sculpture, et s’en remet désormais à l’expertise de photographes professionnels pour assurer le suivi de ses constructions et en particulier celui de la statue de la Liberté. Outils de travail, les photographies sont aussi et surtout un formidable outil communicationnel. Au-delà de leur fonction, ces images racontent vingt années d’un projet démesuré et utopique traversé et marqué par les plus grands enjeux politiques, sociaux, architecturaux et esthétiques de leur temps. »
Luce Lebart
Commissaires de l’exposition : Luce Lebart et Sam Stourdzé.
Exposition réalisée en collaboration avec le Musée Bartholdi, Colmar.
Rencontres d’Arles, au Musée départemental Arles antique, du 04 juillet au 11 septembre 2016, 10H-18H.
http://www.lucelebart.org/index.php/livres
Société française de photographie
71, rue de Richelieu
75002 Paris
France
Collections :
collection[at]sfp.asso.fr
Direction collection :
luce.lebart[at]sfp.asso.fr
How Photography Helped Build the Statue of Liberty
View Slide Show 8 Photographs Credit Pierre Petit, Courtesy of Musée Bartholdi/Christian Kempf
Photography was still in its early years when the 20-year-old Alsatian-born Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi traveled to Egypt with a box camera. He returned with calotypes and, more important, a fascination with the monumental architecture of antiquity — undoubtedly planting the seeds for the gigantism of his own designs for the Statue of Liberty. Although he soon sidelined photography in favor of painting and sculpture, it’s a medium whose visionary possibilities he recognized in the the early stages of its development.
This was the era of public works: In France, Napoleon III used monuments in his reign through 1870 to create a sense of national unity and glory. Bartholdi built his first statue at age 22 (Général Rapp, inaugurated in his hometown, Colmar); later, his Lion de Belfort caused a stir for its proportions — 11 meters high and 22 meters wide, or 36 feet by 72 feet.
But his Statue of Liberty — Liberty Enlightening the World — is Bartholdi’s magnum opus. The project was conceived as a gesture to seal Franco-American friendship — French support during the American Revolution had solidified relations. Moreover, it was seen as a symbolic celebration of a hundred years of United States democracy.
And photography played a crucial role in making Lady Liberty a reality. Bartholdi hired photographers to document its creation, and those images raised money and awareness.
“The entire promotional phase and diffusion of images of the Statue of Liberty is through photography — because Bartholdi had a lot of trouble financing the project,” said Sam Stourdzé, the director of the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival, where many of these images are on display. “He was constantly looking for funds, and he got them by what could be considered the first merchandising campaigns.”
Photo
If anything, Bartholdi was his own master of hype, said Mr. Stourdzé, noting, “The image of the Statue of Liberty circulated well before the statue itself was inaugurated.”
Before the centennial of America’s independence in 1876, Bartholdi took a trip across the United States. Along the way, he acquired a panorama of New York Harbor, which he amended with gouache, directly painting the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe’s Island — now known as Liberty Island — off Manhattan’s tip.
The statue was built in Paris, in an atelier in the 17th Arrondissement to ensure its solidity and durability. Its full 46 meters, or 150 feet, loomed above the local Haussmannian buildings. For each section, a wooden skeleton was covered with plaster and copper sheets were hand-hammered on it to contour the statue’s outermost layer. The architect and restorer Eugène Viollet-le-Duc advised on internal functionality; when he died, Gustave Eiffel and his team took over.
Though Bartholdi no longer practiced photography, he clearly grasped the medium’s importance: He hired professionals to record the progress of his gargantuan, utopian project. The purpose of the images was utilitarian, but the photographers, among them Pierre Petit and Charles Marville, shaped the aesthetics of 19th-century photography.
“You’re faced with a work of art, a monumental sculpture, it’s naturally photogenic,” said Mr. Stourdzé, co-curator of the exhibition “Lady Liberty.” “It’s an access to a moment that’s rather magical.”
The show is chronological to illustrate the deliberate process, with Bartholdi’s photos from Egypt as the starting point. Mr. Stourdzé and his co-curator, Luce Lebart, curator at the French Society of Photography, selected 100 archival images for their aesthetic and informational value.
The Statue of Liberty took Bartholdi 15 years to complete, from 1870 to 1885, a decade longer than anticipated. During the United States’ centennial of independence, only the statue’s hand holding the torch was ready. This part was independently lent to the first American World’s Fair in Philadelphia in 1876, where visitors paid to climb the 10-meter-high hand, and stand before the flame.
Photo
Entrepreneurial savvy was crucial. “Even during the building process, paid public atelier visits were possible,” Mr. Stourdzé said. “Small souvenirs were marketed, including photos.”
The statue’s head was unveiled at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Visitors paid to climb inside and look out through the crown over the city — and then mark this moment of wonder by buying keepsakes.
Bartholdi’s cunning use of photography was unprecedented, because when he started construction in the 1870s, the medium was only 30 years old. “It was a new art form, not terribly easy to handle,” Mr. Stourdzé said. “If it was not the first attempt at using photography for documentation, it was the first that was as complete and systematic for a work of that import.”
After endless delays with the statue, further fiscal problems plagued construction of the massive pedestal on which it would stand, which the Americans were tasked with building. The statue and pedestal were so overdue, the press published drawings of the Statue of Liberty as an old lady, a taunt about how she would look by the time the whole project was completed.
Dismantled into 350 pieces, the statue was transported to New York from the port of Le Havre. When it finally reached the other side of the Atlantic, it was rebuilt over four months and inaugurated on Oct. 28, 1886, with a parade on Broadway. Its awe-inspiring scale was to match the modernity of its egalitarian ideals — and yet, no women, blacks or Jews were invited to the statue’s dedication.
Surprisingly, the Statue of Liberty wasn’t initially intended for New York. It was meant for the opening of the Suez Canal, as a beacon for boats. Bartholdi had presented a model to the canal’s developer, Ferdinand de Lesseps, and to the Khedive of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha, in 1869, but the idea was rejected. In Bartholdi’s first version, the woman’s head was covered, to reference the attire of Middle Eastern peasant women.
Mr. Stourdzé mused, “To think that 130 years ago, the Statue of Liberty could have been at the opening of the Suez Canal, showcasing a veiled version of Liberty.”
“Lady Liberty” is on view at the Musée Départemental Arles Antique in Arles, France, through Sept. 11.
Links: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/how-photography-helped-build-the-statue-of-liberty/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/theater/liberty-monumental-new-musical-review.html?_r=0