The Musée du Quai Branly designed by Jean Nouvel
Photoquai, Paris's first biennale dedicated to photography, is the brainchild of Musée du Quai Branly (MQB) president Stéphane Martin - a truly ambitious event given that the museum has only just celebrated its first year in operation. Recognising the lack of a platform for art being produced beyond the major Western countries, Martin has astutely focused on photography and video emerging from the countries currently represented in the museum's collection of historical artefacts - Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. This major international relations offensive connects many of the museums and galleries of these less visible regions with 30 arts venues and sites around Paris.
But what does the MQB have on offer as the effective 'face' of this initiative? Inevitably, the much debated host venue looms large over its projects. This 2006 Jean Nouvel-designed manifestation is the physical antithesis of its older cousin, the Fondation Cartier, a short distance away in Montparnasse. Where Nouvel's Cartier building is all simplicity and light, reflecting back as much it takes from the locale, MQB is an amorphous armour-panelled beast squatting in front of some prime Paris real estate. Despite the cultural kudos such a project brings, one can only imagine the residents' meeting where plans of this development were broken.
Surveying this piece of architecture one can entertain the idea it might have been constructed on some distant planet, as directed by various Earthly sources, and deposited like a Modernist David in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower's Goliath. There is, as with other of the architect's projects, an inordinate amount of glass involved - Nouvel appears fond of freestanding glass walls that effectively buffer his buildings from urban reality or demarcate the conceptual territories created. But a large proportion of the glass here has been coloured seventies chiffon blues and greens casting a bilious ocean-esque light into an already dark interior.
While curating a contemporary exhibition within this oddly configured building must present all manner of problems - especially given that they have to be organised around a central column packed with old-world relics, like a time capsule with a pre-planned trajectory to the mother ship - elements of the outer shell offer moments of pure incredulity and joy. The current contemporary photography exhibition by Anne Noble may appear to suffer mild seasickness quietly inside, but the external "living wall", for example, provides a fantastic take on the eco demands faced by architects today and a wonderful spectacle to boot.
There are so many positives at the heart of MQB's current project that it seems churlish to rake over the less successful elements of its onsite offerings. However, because of the complexity of the building itself and the infancy of the museum's contemporary curatorial programme, certain issues remain at the forefront of the mind. The international breadth of this photo biennale is impressive, offering access to a significant amount of works never before seen in Europe, but it's hard to get a sense of the true impact of the event without visiting a number of disparate sites around the city. The museum simply doesn't yet feel like the core of a visual arts biennale in the sense of what, historically, we have experienced such an event to be. While the ambitious public art photo project along the Seine showcases some exciting work and poses interesting questions about the presentation of photography in the urban environment, inside, the museum appears business as usual with a show of Walker Evans' African series topping the bill.
Anne Noble, #9 Ruby's Room, 1998-2006
New Zealand photographer Anne Noble is essentially a good contemporary exhibition candidate to reactivate the dust of historicity settling around every corner. Though little known in European art circles, Noble has since the eighties been exhibiting works that spark memories of sensory journeys - in this case the way her daughter (like all young children) learns about the world through her mouth. On the one hand, these partially abstract, high-colour images seem pitch perfect for a diverse public audience, but in this moment of high sensitivity towards the display of images of children (think of the Nan Goldin image seized from the Baltic earlier this year) as you follow from one oral aperture to another, Noble, unnecessarily perhaps, begins to feel like a rather contentious choice.
One of museum's most engaging exhibits is of the first daguerreotypes. Noble's works have been chosen as the polar opposite of these extraordinary first photographic images of African portrait subjects and foreign visitors to Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. And, on paper, this approach makes sense: her images are large, lurid and contemporary while the daguerreotypes are small, mainly monochrome and very old. Yet the condensed sense of history and the unknown emanating from these seductively aged images casts an unfair comparative light on Noble's darkly playful series. Emerging from the cave-like viewing room, having spent significant time peering into this fascinating collection of faces from the past, the bold sensuality and poster-like production and display of Noble's works combine to create a sense of the gaudy advertorial trading on the power of her maternal observations.
Photoquai 2007
Copyright Musée du Quai Branly / photo Jacques Rostand
It's a perfect day to view the vast outdoor photography project on the museum's doorstep. Minimal bus shelter structures house large weatherproofed imagery and provide partial cover from the wind whipping off the water. Every non-European country imaginable is represented here and this diverse selection of works certainly fulfils the curatorial brief to confound popular opinion about these cultural sites and the art they produce. There are some repetitive contemporary art moments that make you question the rate at which critical theory moves around the globe, but this is counterbalanced by the refreshingly unfamiliar. Throwaway cultural commentary and serious political points co-exist happily due to the uniformity of their treatment, while incongruous visual relationships appear curiously aided by the wantonly beautiful backdrop of this stretch of the river.
Tiina Itkonen, Qaanaaq 1
Copyright Tiina Itkonen, Photoquai 2007
Atashi Mehraneh, Bodiless, I
Copyright Mehnareh Atashi, Photoquai 2007
Alongside rising stars such as Tiina Itkonen (the artist's vistas of Artic Canada have already featured in British Architecture journal 'Blueprint'), are some lesser known, but equally interesting figures like Iran's Mehraneh Atashi - whose clever positioning of herself (the creator) within these images of posturing macho men makes salient comment about the real and perceived roles of women in male-dominated cultures. While you can still get a fair idea of how these images might appear 'in the flesh', given the ubiquitous nature of photography in society and the fact that this is the first time we have seen the majority of the works, I wonder if this outdoor exposé is as helpful as it could be to the future careers of these artists. The inevitable pixellisation of the imagery on vinyl sheets promotes an aesthetic link to the protest banner or flag, which inadvertently cheapens some images while over egging the political content of others.
On the flipside, this very visible, accessible platform is also vital in the creation of a non-elitist art link between cultures. Amazingly, so far the public has treated this charged display with absolute respect - give or take the odd beer spillage - something barely possible to hope for in many other European cities and perhaps a more accurate measure of the real success of the museum's project.
Rebecca Geldard
For more information about Photoquai click here. 'Anne Noble: Ruby's Room' is at the Musée du Quai Branly until 13 January 2008.
Rebecca Geldard is a freelance writer and critic living in London.
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