30 October 2007 13 January 2008

Exhibition West suspended Gallery

Curator: Yves Le Fur

www.photoquai.fr
Contacts at the muse du quai Branly:
Nathalie MERCIER, Communication Director
Tel: +33(0)1 56 61 70 20 - nathalie.mercier@quaibranly.fr
Muriel SASSEN, Press Relations Officer
Tel: +33(0)1 56 61 52 87 - muriel.sassen@quaibranly.fr
Press contact: Heymann, Renoult Associes
Tel: +33(0)1 44 61 76 76 - info@heymann-renoult.com

Contents

Context of the exhibition

page 3

The exhibition

pages 4-5

Presentation
Anne Noble

Museography

pages 5-9

Iconographic elements
Scenography

Catalogue

page 10

Yves Le Fur, curator of the exhibition

Patrick Jouin, scenographer for the exhibition

Appendices

pages 11-15

PHOTOQUAI
Practical information
Images for the press

Context of the exhibition

As part of the Photoquai visual arts biennial, the muse du quai Branly will be hosting
three exhibitions dedicated to different forms of photography: contemporary photography
is juxtaposed with vintage photography in the museum's West Suspended Gallery, with a
double exhibition featuring the New Zealand artist Anne Noble, on the one hand, and
daguerreotypes from the museum's photography collections, on the other. The third
exhibition will take place outside the walls of the muse du quai Branly, in the prestigious
Pavillon des Sessions, located in the Louvre Museum: here, pieces from Walker Evans' 1935
portfolio on African art for the African Negro Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York, will be exhibited alongside art objects.

Anne Noble - Rubys Room, 1998-2006

Context of the exhibition

The aim of this series is to provide a highly original representation of childhood, robbed of
its clichs, through the exploration of "what children do with their mouths": Anne Noble
speaks of this approach as a sort of "alternative archaeology": the series features the
artist's own daughter, Ruby. It has been shown in New Zealand and Australia, and has only
been unveiled to the European public in Germany. Rubys Room is comprised of some forty
different photographs. In this series, both the physical and visceral elements are amplified
through the use of highly contrasting colours and direct flash; the pictures are created on
an intentionally disproportionate scale in regard to the apparent banality of the subject,
which is further enhanced by the scenography. Anne Noble's large-format prints create an
interesting contrast with the smaller formats of the nearby daguerreotypes in the Camera
Obscura exhibition, presenting the first daguerreotype photographs of the period 18411851, also taking place in the West Suspended Gallery.
"The photographs in this series present an off-the-wall record of growing up through close
scrutiny of a site where life happens - the mouth. The mouth that speaks, tastes, smiles,
reacts, learns, loves, etc. They celebrate and magnify moments of growing up that are not
normally celebrated, and theyre deliberately not erotic, not romantic, not ideal, not perfect.
The photos of sweets, bubbles, smiles and fake snot are in fact celebratory, playful and
innocent, but to the adult imagination confronting and provocative. I am interested in this
response because it means that the work is doing its job - throwing out a challenge to the
way we imagine childhood. That there is discomfort means there are questions. And that is a
good thing." (Anne Noble)

Anne Noble
A renowned figure in New Zealand photography, Anne Noble works in series. She often
explores the representation of places, memory and sensation. Though little known in
Europe (her works have only been exhibited in Germany and Spain), she has been at the
forefront of the photographic arts in her country since the early 1980s.

Museography
Iconographic elements

Anne Noble, Rubys Room #04

Anne Noble, Rubys Room #10

 Anne Noble, Rubys Room #13

Anne Noble, Rubys Room #09

 Anne Noble, RubysRoom #01

Anne Noble, Rubys Room #12

Scenography

Rubys Room is displayed accross almost all of the West Suspended Gallery, usually
reserved for the musuems anthropology exhibitions. This space, which for three months
will be home to Anne Nobles large, colourful prints, creates a stark contrast with the
scenography of the Camera obscura daguerreotype exhibition, presented in the "box"
adjacent to the West Suspended Gallery a metaphor for the "dark room" used by
photographers of yesterday and today.

Patrick Jouin, muse du quai Branly

The photos in the Rubys Room series are exhibited on large picture rails arranged all
throughout the mezzanine (West Suspended Gallery).

 Patrick Jouin, muse du quai Branly

Catalogue
A portfolio-catalogue will be published for this
exhibition, dominated by the most faithful possible
reproductions of the works in the series.
Anne Noble, Rubys room, 28X35 cm, 64 pages,
about 15.
The introduction features an interview with Anne
Noble by Yves le Fur.
All of the Photoquai catalogues are co-published
with Editions Nicolas Chaudun.
Editions Nicolas Chaudun
Created in 2004 by Nicolas Chaudun, former editor-in-chief of Beaux Arts magazine,
Editions Nicolas Chaudun specialises in art and travel books, with a catalogue of some 45
titles to choose from. A number of titles are co-published with various institutions such as
the Institut de France, the Musum d'Histoire naturelle, the Muse d'Orsay, the Muse
Carnavalet and the muse du quai Branly. The publishing house has just started a new
collection entitled "le fond des choses" (getting to the bottom of things). The idea is to
publish dissertations which have been reviewed, corrected and beautifully illustrated, in
order to make them more accessible to the layman without losing their inherent depth.
From the beginning, Editions Nicolas Chaudun has gone to great lengths to support
contemporary photography: by bringing together a collection of 100 photographers in
Histoire de chaussures for the benefit of Handicap International, publishing new works by
experienced photographers (Philippe Joudious Alger-Douala), and of course seeking out
new talents.

Extract: interview with Anne Noble, by Yves Le Fur

Anne, we have the Rubys Room photographs in front of us here and you say that the
one in which she is poking out her tongue was the first of the series. What triggered
this work?
It goes back to a time when I was reflecting on the duality of my new role as artist and
mother. I had been doing independent documentary projects for a long time, which
involved a lot of travelling, and suddenly I was bound by domesticity and family life. So
this led me to analyse what was really important to me as an artist. Unconsciously I began
thinking about the importance of everyday life and things that were close to me and as
part of that I photographed my baby, my daughter. At that time, almost without realising, I
was taking very classical, occasionally funny, black and white pictures, just moments of
childhood, little observations. Then one day I photographed her asleep, naked on a couch
in front of a window, and the light was very beautiful. I made a print and I felt I had
captured a moment of beauty. Ruby must have been five or six at the time. A few weeks
later I found the photograph in her bedroom. She had coloured the whole picture in. I was
intrigued and when I said to her Youve coloured in the photograph she told me just how
much she disliked this picture, that she didnt like the fact that I had photographed her
without her knowing and that she didnt want to be photographed naked. She said it very
firmly and clearly and this discrepancy between my process of observation, my sense of the
beauty or innocence of childhood and her own experience of being represented or
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photographed really interested me. It set me thinking about how adults represent
childhood and how a basically ordinary photograph can be viewed by a child as an affront.
I began to think that the way adults romanticise their lost childhood is related to a sense of
innocence that never existed. So in order to produce a more authentic, grounded view of
childhood I began to photograph Ruby in an everyday context. One day Ruby came rushing
into the apartment and I had my camera so I said Hang on, Ill take your photograph and
she ran up to me and poked her tongue out. I took the photograph and she laughed and
loved my response. I didnt scold her because it was just so lovely. The film that Id used,
almost by accident, was a high contrast colour film and the colour was very prevalent. It
had a sense of immediacy that somehow captured the interaction between a mother and a
child and the colour emphasised the space between the childs position and the adults
response - unlike black and white, which is related to the adult imagination of childhood
and conjures up the past, loss. And I loved the colour, I really enjoyed it. Yes, it was the
first, or at least one of the first photographs in the series. ()
Did you carry on the series using the same kind of framing?
I continued it much like a project, I suppose. I thought that if there was a way to
photograph, it could be around these little moments of spontaneity. I was with Ruby most
of the time doing ordinary things that you would never think to photograph, moments of
play like making a beard out of bubbles in the bath or deliberately upsetting adults. For
instance children have these nasty vomit-coloured pots of Gloop which they put on their
faces and then they run into the room and all the adults cry: Oh, thats disgusting, awful,
go away! ()
And this one?
Shes trying to pull a tooth out with a string as lots of children do in New Zealand. I had it
on the wall of my studio but people reacted to it with their own anxiety. I was intrigued by
that as I hadnt seen it in that way, I was just cataloguing play. Foucaults idea of
knowledge generated through a kind of cataloguing of information interested me and to
me this was a catalogue project, a sort of ethnography of childhood. But when some
people responded with quite obvious discomfort around what they viewed as sexual, I
concluded that these photographs actually bring them face to face with their own fears.
Adults bring their own experience of the mouth as a sexual connection or potential.
Does Ruby refuse some of the photographs?
Yes, but it changes. It was important for me that this project didnt define our relationship.
Actually there arent that many photographs considering they span about eight years. I
didnt take them every day or every week. It just happened quietly and occasionally and I
never set it up. I was aware that being the subject of my work was a delicate issue for Ruby
and that I needed to tread with care. It was vital that she should not feel affronted or
upset, that she should like the photographs and be perfectly happy for them to be taken.
She did put a big cross on some of them but it varies ()
The photograph with tape on her lips?
Yes, she didnt want that photograph exhibited. She just said I dont like it, Mum and no
you cant and I made a print of it. Over the next few years she would always check that I
had never exhibited that photograph and I never have. And then I asked her why and she
said Mum, its just not a good photograph. So I said Is that all, its not that you dont
like it? and she said It just doesnt belong to the series. And I said Actually I think it
does and she said Maybe it does, yes, you can use it.

11

Yves Le Fur, curator of the exhibition

Vice-director of the Heritage and Collections Department and manager of the muse du
quai Branly's permanent collections.
Formerly the curator of the Muse national des Arts dAfrique et dOcanie, Yves le Fur
was curator of the 1999 exhibition entitled La mort nen saura rien : Reliques dEurope et
dOcanie, featuring relics from Europe and Oceania.
In autumn 2006, Le Fur presented the muse du quai Branlys manifesto exhibition, dun
regard lAutre.
During Photoquai, he will be the curator of the Walker Evans photography exhibition
presented in the Pavillon des Sessions, the muse du quai Branlys exhibition area located
at the Louvre museum, and of the outdoor exhibits for New Zealand.

Patrick Jouin, scenographer for the exhibition

The Patrick Jouin agency is handling the scenography for the outdoor Photoquai
exhibitions and the three exhibitions taking place at the muse du quai Branly.

www.patrickjouin.com

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World Visual Arts Biennale

Paris
First edition: 30 October 25 November 2007

From 30 October to 25 November

2007, the muse du quai Branly is
hosting the First Edition of
PHOTOQUAI, the new World Visual
Arts Biennale.
Le monde regarde le monde (the world
observing the world)
PHOTOQUAI is a festival of international scope,
whose purpose is to reveal new contemporary
talents from around the world to the public,
be they amateurs, collectors or professionals.
As a festival designed to reveal new talents
rather than confirm the work of experienced
artists, Photoquai leans towards the
contemporary, though it certainly does not
exclude artists belonging to a history of art
and photography.
Along the same line of reasoning for the choice of artists, the curators participating in the
exhibitions are all from non-Western countries.
Emphasis is placed on the geocultural regions in which the muse du quai Branly
specialises: Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

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Photoquai will take place in the month of November 2007 and will be organised around
several key themes:
PHOTOQUAI mostra:
- Indoor exhibitions (In the museums, cultural centres, embassies, galleries etc. In
partnership with the biennial),
- and outdoor exhibitions (on the banks of the River Seine - free entry): one hundred
photographers and video directors will present their works on 3 themes: (The
metamorphosis of nature, fictional stories and confrontation).
From 30 October to 25 November 2007 quai Branly, passerelle Debilly and partner
institutions

PHOTOQUAI forum: debates, discussions, meetings with artists, video directors, agencies
and the international festivals of Africa, China, Latin America etc. The following subjects
will be debated in the Thtre Claude Lvi-Strauss: the question of committed pictures
anthropological outlook vs. humanitarian approach on the one hand and alternative
structures for broadcasting images on the other.
PHOTOQUAI studio: this year, the Ecole Spciale dArchitecture de Paris (ESA) will
present the work of its foreign students from Jerusalem, Melbourne, Mexico, Buenos Aires,
Singapore, and Wellington. Their French counterparts, also on exchange placements for a
semester, will relay the project to ESA partner schools throughout the world. Another
collaboration involves the Ecole nationale suprieure des arts dcoratifs (ENSAD),
th
exhibiting the work of a dozen 4 year photography students. A project with the Ecole
nationale suprieure de la photographie dArles (ENSP) and the Gobelins visual
communications school is also in progress for future Photoquai editions.
PHOTOQUAI international: a network of information and cooperation between a variety
of institutions, agencies and festivals; visibility of humanitarian organisations and NGOs
having always worked with visual media, often of great quality.
PHOTOQUAI is the result of partnerships with a number of international events such as
the Lianzhou International Photo Festival, the African Photography Festival in Bamako, the
Moscow Biennale, PhoToANA in Madagascar, FotoRio in Brazil...thus joining a movement
of exchange and cooperation between France and the different countries and regions of
the world.
PHOTOQUAI is also the result of the participation of national and international public
institutions, diplomatic organisations and private associations: the Australian Embassy,
Brazilian Embassy, Centre culturel de la Chine Paris, Cit de larchitecture et du
patrimoine, Institut polonaise, Jeu de Paume, Maisons europenne de la photographie
and the Muse national de la Marine. The Seine serves as a unique link between these
institutions, from Chaillot hill to eastern Paris.
While the subject matter is left open, PHOTOQUAI's main theme is the diversity of
perspectives on the contemporary world via the installation of major photography events
in the Parisian and international landscapes.
The artistic director of Photoquai is Jean-Loup Pivin, the creator and manager of the
Revue Noire, a magazine dedicated to contemporary African art, as well as an architect,
scenographer and museographer.

www.photoquai.fr
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Practical information
Muse du quai Branly
New Opening hours
Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday: 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Group admission: daily, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. (except Sunday)
Closed on Mondays
Admission charges
Muse du quai Branly (Permanent collections,
suspended galleries):
Adults: 8,50
Concessions: 6 (students)

Day at the Museum ticket (museum + garden

gallery)
Adults: 13
Concessions: 9.50 (students)

Reservations
Fnac: www.fnac.com / +33 (0) 892 684 694 (0.34/min in France)
Ticketnet: www.ticketnet.fr / +33 (0) 892 390 100 (0.34/min in France)
Membership
The muse du quai Branly pass gives you unlimited access to all museum spaces, gets you to the
front of the queue and offer reduced theatre show tickets.
The Pass is available to young people (15 euros), single adults (45 euros), for two (70 euros) or and
for groups (35 euros).
Free access to permanent collections and temporary exhibitions for the under 18s, the
unemployed, receivers of minimum welfare (RMI), severely disabled ex-servicemen and the seriously
handicapped, and muse du quai Branly passholders.

Information
Telephone: + 33 (0)1 56 61 70 00
E-mail: contact@quaibranly.fr
Website: www.quaibranly.fr / www.photoquai.fr
Location
The exhibitions are located in the West Suspended Gallery of the permanent collections plateau.
On foot
Museum entrances are located at 206 and 218 rue de lUniversit or at 27, 37, or 51 quai Branly,
Paris 7th arrondissement.
Public transport
Metro: Pont de lAlma (RER C), Bir Hakeim (line 6), Alma-Marceau (line 9), Ina (line 9).
Bus: line 42: La Bourdonnais or Bosquet-Rapp bus stops; routes 63, 80, 92: Bosquet- Rapp bus stop;
route 72: Muse dart moderne bus stop Palais de Tokyo
Shuttle boat: Tour Eiffel stop (Batobus, Bateaux parisiens and Vedettes de Paris).
Car park
Visitors may park for a fee. Access via 25 quai Branly, 520 parking places.

Contacts at the muse du quai Branly:

Nathalie MERCIER, Communication Advisor
Tel: +33(0)1 56 61 70 20 - nathalie.mercier@quaibranly.fr
Muriel SASSEN, Press Relations Officer
Tel: +33(0)1 56 61 52 87 - muriel.sassen@quaibranly.fr

Press contact:
Heymann, Renoult Associes
Tel: +33(0)1 44 61 76 76 - info@heymann-renoult.com

15

IMAGES FOR THE PRESS

http://ymago.quaibranly.fr
Login access given on request

Anne Noble #4 Rubys Room, 1998-2006

Anne Noble

Anne Noble : #9 Rubys Room, 1998-2006

Anne Noble

Anne Noble : #13 Rubys Room, 1998-2006

Anne Noble

Anne Noble : #10 Rubys Room, 1998-2006

Anne Noble

16