CANNES 2012

My Official Selection

 AMOUR(LOVE)_Michael Haneke




MOONRISE KINGDOM_Wes Anderson




 DA-REUN NA-RA-E-SUH (IN ANOTHER COUNTRY)_Hong Sangsoo




LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE_Abbas Kiarostami




DE ROUILLE ET D'OS (RUST AND BONE)_Jacques Audiard




REALITY_Matteo Garrone




LAWLESS_ John Hillcoat

Mexico City Waltz by Nicolas Comment

Mexico City Waltz is inspired by three texts – Tristessa by Jack Kerouac, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, and Voyage au pays des Tarahumaras by Antonin Artaud-, which provided Nicolas Comment with the keys to Mexico. Although he goes in search of the traces of these authors, he finally departs from his search and builds a subjective visual poem about Mexico today. There we meet three young women, “as brown as berries” (Lowry), who are the real heroines in the story. The title refers, in a ternary mode, to Mexico City Blues by Kerouac. Nicolas Comment sees in his photographic work a response to the concept of “spontaneous prose” developed by the writer: instantaneousness, accumulation, and musicality.

 Pictures by Nicolas Comment

 Book for Sale in Filigranes Editions

Gerhard Richter: landscapes

Corsica (House) 1969 115 cm x 130 cm Oil on canvas

Wilhelmshaven 1969 50 cm x 70 cm Oil on canvas

Bridge (at the Seaside) 1969 93 cm x 98 cm Oil on canvas

Landscape with Cloud 1969 91 cm x 86 cm Oil on canvas

Ruhrtal Bridge 1969 120 cm x 150 cm Oil on canvas

Vierwaldstätter See 1969 100 cm x 130 cm Oil on canvas

Large Teyde Landscape 1971 200 cm x 300 cm Oil on canvas

Large Teyde Landscape (with 2 Figures) 1971 200 cm x 300 cm Oil on canvas

House Sohl 1972 100 cm x 70 cm Oil on canvas

Venice (Staircase) 1985 50 cm x 70 cm Oil on canvas

Landscape 1985 100 cm x 140 cm Oil on canvas

Königstein 1987 52 cm x 72 cm Oil on canvas

Photo paintings by Gerhard Richter

Copia by Brian Ulrich

“The Copia project began as a simple curiosity: Were people out shopping in the months after Sept. 11th to follow a patriotic directive? It quickly dawned on me that the subject I began to explore was something a lot bigger; one historical, anthropological, ideological and indicative of American identity and psychology. It also seemed a crucial time with the change from one century to the next and one where paradigms were shifting faster than we could grasp.

So many of the ideas set forth in the 20th century—the American ideal, the manufacture of desire, the insistence on exponential growth—all brought us to a point where the measure of the quality of our lives is based on how much we spend and how much time we have for leisure. Once we began to equate this well-being with financial markets our futures were gambled. The financial market does as it is built to do, rise and fall, gain and recede, but with so much of our well being invested in it, we act surprised when the tides shift.

Currently the predominant thought is based on putting capital back into markets so they’ll pick up again and bring us back to where we once were; like jump starting a dead car battery. What we miss is how unsustainable that is. Even bigger is the idea that we as a nation are not made up of businesses, banks, malls, markets, homes or things. Our greatest asset is ourselves: our lives and our people. The real investment should be there.”

Lightbox Time


Dark stores

Circuit city, 2008

Circuit city, 2010


Simon, Winrock Shopping Center, 2010


Marshall Fields, 2009


Circuit City,Ponderosa Steakhouse,2008


Sara, Deerbrook Mall 2010


Pep Boys 3,2009
"At 1 a.m., after a long day, walking back to the car to pack up the camera, I looked back at this Pep Boys and cursed under my breath as I knew the picture would prolong sleep at least another hour. I woke the next day happy and tired."




"The idea went back to 2005 when I drove weekly past a large closed supermarket on the North Side of Chicago. At night the space really transformed from one of neglect and misuse to something incredibly visual that described a Rothko-esque painting space divided in three parts (parking lot, building, and sky). I spent a few nights making some photographs to try and replicate what I saw. I had been working on a larger project dealing with American consumerism, and it was no surprise to me that these spaces would fail and dwindle as fast they arise. I was in the midst of a deeper project, photographing in thrift stores and recycling shops as part of my “Copia” series, so I shelved the idea."

Interview The Morning News



Retail


Las Vegas, NV, 2003


Gurnee, IL, 2005


New York, NY, 2004


Flushing, NY, 2004


Edinburgh, UK, 2003


Chicago, IL, 2003


Chicago, IL, 2003




‘For many of the pictures in the Retail project I used a medium format SLR with a waist level viewfinder. Having a finder that you can look down into instead of holding it to your eye calls a lot attention to yourself as well as allows one to hold the camera still at much slower shutter speeds. Regardless of those things though, the majority of the time it takes a combination of patience and boldness. Strangely I don’t run into people having much of an issue with it. Most often I really don’t think people notice. If an employee does ask me not to take pictures I simply laugh and move on, I’m well aware that what I’m doing looks odd. Better to own up and hit walk across the street to the Kmart’.
‘I had such good luck with the medium format camera that I’ve also used a 4×5 as well. Again in these cases I think most people think I’m supposed to be there. I’ve had employees keep the store open late so I can finish a picture!

Interview FeatureShoot




Thrift

"Thrift was meant to be photographs not just of the stores and items but a different consumer class than Retail"

Untitled, 2007 (0707)


Untitled, 2007 (0718)


Untitled, 2007 (0713)


Untitled, 2007 (0710)


Untitled, 2005 (0505)


Untitled, 2006 (0611)


Untitled, 2005 (0503)
"One of the events that really triggered the commitment to photograph the thrift stores was the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005. The daily broadcast and attention to issues of race and class in mainstream media was merely the tip of the iceberg of those enduring problems in our country. I thought the thrift shops could in some ways be an allegory for that dilemma where upper and middle class goods were cast down to a lower income consumer class."





Book

Is This Place Great or What preview from Brian Ulrich on Vimeo.

Pictures and words by Brian Ulrich

Raymond Cauchetier Part1

Godard directs a scene at Orly airport.


Raymond Cauchetier was the set photographer on many of the seminal films of the French New Wave between 1959 and 1968 including Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breathless)1960.
The film is centred around a love affair between anti-hero Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a French petty criminal on the run from the police, and his American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), a student who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-ées. Patricia unwittingly hides him in her apartment as he simultaneously tries to seduce her and plan his escape to Italy. She eventually learns Michel is on the run and contacts the police, resulting in him being shot dead by the police on the street. Godard's first feature-length film is among the inaugural films of the French New Wave. The film was released the year after FranTruffaut's Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) and Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Together, the three films brought international attention and acclaim to the nouvelle vague, and bout de souffle (Breathless) was heralded for the bold monochrome visuals and its provocative, original style.




This is Seberg's first day of work on À bout de souffle (Breathless) with Jean-Paul Belmondo (left) and Godard at a café on the Champs-Élysées, August 24, 1959. Seberg was unused to Godard's unconventional methods of direction, having previously worked on large scale films surrounded by an army of technicians, assistants and cameras. Now she was virtually alone with Godard, with no script or prior direction.


In this image Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg walk down the Champs-Élysées in Jean Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless). Raymond Cauchetier's photograph has become the emblem of the nouvelle vague. For Cauchetier 'The photographer must be forgotten. It is a shadow.


Where is the camera?.


Left to right: director Jean-Luc Godard, cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Jean Seberg in Paris shooting of Breathless.



Jean Seberg kissing Jean-Paul Belmondo on the Champs-ées.


Jean-Paul Belmondo smoking on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris.


Jean Seberg filming bout de souffle on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris.


Jean Seberg on the set.


Jean Seberg, smoking a cigarette at the Hde Su during filming.


Jean-Luc Godard et Jean-Paul Belmondo filming.





Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg filming at the Hde Suin Paris.



Godard, reading from a script, pushes a wheelchair holding cameraman Raoul Coutard as Seberg and Belmondo look on.



In the movie, the street around the characters is quiet and un-peopled. However, in reality passersby and neighbourhood children crowded curiously around the camera. Here, Seberg is seen filming under the watchful eyes of the crowd and director Jean-Luc Godard.





Godard (center, with tie around neck) observes Belmondo on the street, as Coutard shoots with a handheld camera. Not much crowd control...