Jean-Michel Berts/Sous Les Etoiles Gallery
Sous Les Etoiles The Gallery 560 Broadway #205 10012 New York États-Unis
NEW YORK, NY, November 2009 - Photographs from The Cities of Jean-Michel Berts’ series will be on view at Sous Les Etoiles Gallery from November 12, 2009 through January 29, 2010. This is Jean-Michel Berts’ second solo exhibition at Sous Les Etoiles. There will be an opening reception on November 12th from 6-9 pm at the gallery.
Sous les Etoiles Gallery is thrilled to introduce a new series of black and white carbon pigment prints from the French photographer Jean-Michel Berts. His unique vision of mystifying light compliments the carbon pigment’s rich deep blacks and infinitely subtle tonal variations. The tactile surface quality of the prints pays homage to the handcrafted beauty of the early twentieth century Pictorialist movement.
The Cities work of Jean-Michel Berts began nearly ten years ago, almost by accident. “I was in Venice and the Piazza San Marco was flooded. I didn’t plan to take any images, but the atmosphere was so exceptional that I could not resist,” he remembers. Returning to Paris, he discovered the film inside his camera was black and white, not color as he had thought. It was at that moment when he rediscovered the pleasures of working in black and white.
Jean-Michel Berts collects the essence of cities in his body of work called City Portrait. His glance is there to remind us of the grandeur of civilizations. The abstraction of characters makes it possible to put human construction forward and thus reanimate timelessness. Whether Paris, New York, Venice, London or Tokyo, through his eyes these sublimated cities take on a poetic, ethereal and dreamlike value. Jean-Michel Berts prefers to take pictures early the morning because, as he likes to say, “during this period of time, crossing emotions, feelings and atmosphere, this is always when the images come to me.”
This exclusive series of carbon pigment prints was printed in it’s entirety by the Sous Les Etoiles fine art printing department.