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June 5, 2016

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Photo exhibition brings alive portrait of stars

THE Shanghai Center of Photography (SCoP) will hold an exhibition of acclaimed French photographer Brigitte Lacombe, titled, “Lacombe | Inside Cinema,” from June 11.

It is the first time that Lacombe’s work is being exhibited in Shanghai. It reveals her unique “insider” perspective on the world of cinema. The exhibition has previously toured New York, Paris and London.

If the previous generation of theatrical photographers had the gift of turning actors into stars, Lacombe had the gift of turning stars into actors — returning them back to the people with the ability to perform. The relationship between an actor and a picture-taker is still a performance, but her pictures tend to carry a different announcement. Instead of saying “Look, I’m still here!” they seem to say “Look! I’m still, here.”

Always shot in black and white, naturally lit, her subjects stripped off their make-up and costume. The faces she looks at are not energetically self-defining, but almost hazy, marked by preoccupation, wistfulness, near shyness.

She shows a new kind of glamor that erases the previous one. Her works are not flattering portraits so much as they are reassuring; they seem to show how much a first class talent can do without and still look good. She conveys the reticence that people wished they had, the reticence we wish onto them in a time of over-spill. She gently eliminates their nerves, and shows their fragilities.

Lacombe has worked as a special photographer on the films of Martin Scorsese, Spike Jonze, Bennett Miller, Sam Mendes, David Mamet, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Haneke, James Gray, among others.

She contributes to Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, German Vogue, ZEITmagazin, NeueJournal, The Financial Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and many others.

She is currently at work on her third book of personal photos which will be published in 2018.

 

Date: Through August 28

Venue: Shanghai Center of Photography

Address: 2555-1 Longteng Ave, Pudong


 

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