April 21 – June 18, 2022
The Galerie Rouge is pleased to welcome you to its renovated location on the occasion of an exhibition devoted to the first ten years of the career of Édouard Boubat (1923-1999). Representative of the French humanist scene, poet-photographer, “correspondent of peace” according to Jacques Prévert, we no longer present this recognized artist. Boubat remains a mystery, however. If his photography imposes itself by its obviousness and its great softness, it bears the mark of an original writing which makes us say with each image “it can only be Boubat”.
The exhibition retraces the beginnings of the photographer, from 1946 to 1957, to try, not to pierce all the mysteries of Édouard Boubat, but to understand how the eye of the photographer was formed. What were his first subjects? Were his look, his style and his poetry present from his very first photographs?
This exhibition features never-before-seen images and rare period prints alongside iconic photographs of his work. It should be noted that a number of the prints exhibited were made by Édouard Boubat himself, which allows us to appreciate his mastery of the print and to feel the emotion that was undoubtedly his when developing his photographs. Each image on display says something about the photographer by telling the story of his first encounters and photographic discoveries.
Édouard Boubat, the sweetness of the gaze is presented in three parts. The exhibition opens with the photographs of Lella, Édouard Boubat’s first great love and photographic subject. Then, through his first photographs of Paris, we see the evolution of his gaze as a photographer, close to the French humanist scene, which gradually finds its own identity. Finally, the Galerie Rouge exhibits the first reports of the photographer made in Portugal, Spain, Italy and the United States for the magazines US Camera and Réalités .
La Galerie Rouge
3 rue du Pont Louis-Philippe,
75004 Paris
France