Nouvelle Vague mon amour
LA NOUVELLE VAGUE.
ICONIC NEW WAVE PHOTOGRAPHS BY RAYMOND CAUCHETIER
14 July – 28 August 2010
An exhibition that celebrates, at the same time, the 50th anniversary of Jean Luc Godard's A bout the souffle (1960) and Raymond Cauchetier's 90th Birthday.
These photographs speak to my heart and my memories.
Back in my university years, at La Sapienza in Rome, I remember spending numerous nights watching classic films. One of my course was on French Cinema in the 60s, the Nouvelle Vague mouvement with auteurs such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda amongst others.
My days were fulfilled by B/W images of French stories. I could see them on my wall, on my desk, on my books, on my tv screen, on my long conversation with other students at the university Cafe' and definitely, in my dreams.
Jean-Pierre Léaud/Antoine Doinel was my idol!
Truffaut said once: "The film of tomorrow will be an act of love" and these directors surely showed the way how to make films as an act of love!
They did everything possible to tell their stories even with tight budgets. They brought the cinema down the streets, in friends's apartments, inside the cafes in Paris. They also played and experimented with the medium itself, willing to break old rules.
Their films are poetic, beautiful, ironic.
Raymond Cauchetier was there to capture the spirit of those days in the 60s. His camera was looking straight into the directors's camera and ideas. Most of his images are now iconic and it is a simple pleasure to look at them!
From the RAYMOND CAUCHETIER's page on the gallery website.
According to Marc Vernet:The power of Raymond Cauchetier's photography does not stem simply from the exceptional character of the stars he photographed, or from the artistic dimension of the directors for whom he worked...but from the fact that he, before anyone else, knew just how to capture the mood of what would become known as the "Nouvelle Vague"
In 1959 Cauchetier was hired as the on-set photographer for Godard's first feature, A Bout de Souffle. He photographed not only the famous moments, such as Jean Seberg and Jean Paul Belmondo walking down the Champs Elysées, Seberg in her New York Herald Tribune t-shirt, but also behind-the-scenes glimpses which document the filmmaking process. Unlike other on-set photographers whose aim was simply to create stills which could be used for publicity purposes, Cauchetier approached the set as a photojournalist, bearing witness to a defining moment in cinematic history. The resulting images offer an incredible insight into the genius of Godard and document his highly unorthodox methods.
5 SAVILE ROW LONDON W1S 3PD
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