© Marc Asnin / Courtesy Galerie La petite poule noire
Galerie La Petit Poule Noire 12 bd des Filles du Calvaire 75011 Paris France
A naked man wearing cowboy boots looks thoughtfully thought the window. A sunray falls on the floor of a small dusty flat in Brooklyn. A dog howls behind a child.
Uncle Charlie is, above all, a body. A skinny man’s body too soon damaged by drugs, by life, by mad- ness. A ravaged and abandoned body, on which the photographer lays his eyes with acuteness, but also tenderness and an infinite compassion.
This exhibition is the result of a 30-year-long work of utmost honesty. It is an intimate immersion whose scope was rarely matched in photography’s history. Marc Asnin took pictures of his uncle and his family during all these years. These richly textured images, deep and organic blacks and whites, paint the picture of a complex and disturbed man, Charles Henschke, the photographers’ uncle and godfather.
This family’s study is remarkably profound: a family tangled in its disarray, victim of one of its mem- ber’s mental illness, but that also shares joyful and relaxed moments. Inspired by Bruce Davidson’s photography and by his project East 100th Street, Marc Asnin first tried to use photography as a means to establish a connection with his uncle, before being carried away in this emotional journey. The result is an exceptional document on a closed universe: that of the flat that Uncle Charlie never leaves anymore, of this poor neighborhood where family tragedies are daily routine, and of the mental universe of its lead character.
The exhibition displays around forty black-and-white pictures and several large color prints, as well as a sound installation.
Contrasto also published a book in 2012.
Uncle Charlie contemplating in his living room the reality that his son Joe is dying from HIV, sitting by the window holding his newest and latest handgun in his apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn in 1996 © Marc Asnin / Courtesy Galerie La petite poule noire
The book
Marc Asnin is the winner of the RFK Photography Award 2013 with Uncle Charlie.
22 x 30 cm
408 pages
220 b/w images
40,000 words text
45€-35£-49$
ISBN 978-88-6965-177-9
www.contrastobooks.com
Photographies et vignette © Marc Asnin / Courtesy Galerie La petite poule noire
