[ ] · · BRUNO BARBEY

[Sopho Nadareishvili]

Bruno Barbey

[Tamri]

ფანტასტიკა!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

თვალი ვერ მოვწყვიტე ! კიდევ და კიდევ მინდა ვუყურო ამ ფოტოებს!

უძლიერესი ეფექტია!

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Bruno Barbey has always contrasted a versatility of technique with a consistency of theme. He uses both black-and-white and color photography, revealing the subtle complexities of life in places that are usually only known as names or news stories. His methods are those of reportage rather than news reporting: finding the story behind the action. But beyond this career as a photojournalist, there is also a second aspect to Barbey's photography, and that is as a producer of books and exhibitions. Barbey specifically sees this as a major part of his activities, repeatedly working in series with a view to presenting his work in this way.

Born in Morocco in 1941, Barbey's first love was aviation. A qualified pilot from the age of 16, he also learnt to parachute. Having completed his formal education at the prestigious lyc'e Henri IV in Paris, and at art school in Vevey, Switzerland, he launched himself somewhat unexpectedly into documentary photography.

In Barbey's first piece of reportage, which explored the Italian national character, the twin senses of scale and humor were already proving to be hallmarks of his work. Choice examples included the doll's house-perspective of a Naples interior, with a lovingly polished Vespa parked before a blank TV screen, proudly surveyed by their young owner from his bed; the Fiat covered in shiny tarpaulin, before which a family has pulled up their chairs and table as if it were a tent; and the view of street children mischievously circling a dwarf who holds out his hand to beg, the adult for once smaller than the ambiguous children surrounding him.

Barbey was scarcely 20 when he undertook the Italian project. It was first published in the Swiss magazine Camera in 1966, while a book version is due out in 2002. Meanwhile, Barbey had been traveling - to Kenya, Kuwait, Portugal and Scotland - for Rencontres, a publishing house based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He also joined the Magnum agency in 1966, and had his first exhibition at the BibliothSque Nationale in Paris.

In the late 60s, Barbey covered the Biafra and, later, the Vietnam wars, producing moving, rather than shocking imagery in his reportage. 1968 saw him in Paris for the May protests, tracking the broad sweep of events over time: from the pitched, street battles to the student funerals; from Jean-Paul Sartre's pro-Communist rallies, to Charles de Gaulle's response.

Through the 70s and 80s, Barbey began to use color photography for his projects. In 1979 he completed his first major color reportage, which examined Poland during the heady days of 'Solidarity' in the Gdansk shipyards. This book was produced for Editions Arthaud, with a text by journalist Bernard Guetta. It was the first of a number of publications Barbey was to produce with important writers, who came to include the Moroccan-born author Tahar Ben Jelloun and the poet Dom Moraes.

Working with Moraes on Bombay, Barbey's work developed into a sequence of iconic single images. A homeless man sleeps in a doorway before a display of peacocks and topiary; two young Sikhs, mounted on a cardboard-cutout motorbike, sharing a rifle and weighed down with ammunition belts, are seen before a palatial backdrop. Most hauntingly, a cripple is seen from above, contorted, with an umbrella hung around one foot. A parrot perches on his feet, while another drops a coin from the collecting bowl onto his lips.

As research for his major photo-books, Barbey has produced photojournalism at a phenomenal rate for magazines such as Time, LIFE, Stern, Paris-Match, G'o, The Sunday Times Magazine and National Geographic. Exhibitions accompany these activities, primarily in France - he has shown at Le Petit Palais and the Maison Europ'enne de la Photographie in Paris, as well as repeatedly featuring in the biannual 'Mois de la Photo', also in Paris. Beyond France, he has exhibited all over the world.