In recent years, intimacy has invaded the public domain. Every day we are bombarded with displays of intimacy – over the airwaves, on TV screens and on the Internet, but also in museums and galleries. This programmed confrontation between the public and the subjective experience of others has become somehow symbolic of the contemporary world, and as such is reflect in the creations of many photographers and video artists working today. Whether in the form of personal journals, narratives of inner life, or theatrical presentations of self, intimacy is everywhere, often couched in an aesthetics of the ordinary, the anti-heroic, and operating in the realm of instantaneity and spontaneity. (…)

The public display of a intimate image makes us accomplice to what is shared. This complicity is a profound and tacit link between individuals, embodied in currents of intensity that are often subtly detectable. This “conspiracy” is formulated and formalised in a variety of ways by the artist presented here. The images of Raymonde April – but also of Angela Grauerholz, Nathalie Caron and Charles Guilbert – are in collusion with their own everyday lives. The work of each testifies to the intimacy shared with those around them. Their images invoke what Michel Foucault has called “the aesthetic of shared pleasures” *. The links between these artists are there to see. (…)

* Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, t.III. Le souci de soi, Paris: Gallimard, 1984.

Extracts from the exhibition catalogue.

Exhibition produce by VOX, centre de diffusion de la photographie, presented at the Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam from September 10th to October 29th, 2000 and at Contretype 2 (CO2), la Raffinerie, Bruxelles from November 22th to December 22th, 2000.

Partners:
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Canada Council for the Arts                                                                                  Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec