Open-air photo show counters western cliches

by Susan Owensby

Article published on the 2009-10-24 Latest update 2009-10-26 09:35 TU

Facing up to photos on the Quai Branly
© musée du quai Branly, photo Antoine Schneck

When Paris's museum of non-European art realised that all its photos were by westerners, it organised a show of work by photographers from developing countries. The show on the banks of the Seine turns its back on the exotic to see countries through local people's eyes.

Death by Tupperware
(Photo: Daniela Edburg/© musée du quai Branly, Photoquai 2009)

The Musée du Quai Branly, Paris’s non-western arts museum, is – not surprisingly – right on the quai which runs along the river Seine.

Sometimes its shows spill out of the museum and onto the quai, and that’s just what’s happened with Photoquai - an exhibition of photographs from 32 different countries, none of them occidental. 

The artistic director of the exhibition is Iranian gallery owner Anahita Etehadieh, the first and only woman to own a gallery in Tehran.

She says that, in her 30 years of travel between the east and west, she continues to be shocked by the cultural misunderstandings between the two.

She hopes that Photoquai will help to dispel myths and cliches, by showing the reality of a country as perceived by someone from that country, instead of a westerner’s idea of the country. 

Saqi'er, 29-year-old, and her two-year-old daughter Wurichaihu in Inner Mongolia
(Photo: © Ayin/© musée du quai Branly, Photoquai 2009)

The 50 photographers in the exhibit, although they may be quite famous in their own countries, have never before exhibited in Europe.

The exhibit was “team-curated” – a curator from Quai Branly teamed up with a curator from each of the 32 countries represented. Christine Barthe, who is head of the museum’s photography collection, worked on Argentina and Mexico.

Children of Colpa
(Photo: © Morfi Jimenez/© musée du quai Branly, Photoquai 2009)

She says that the museum has a huge collection of photographs of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific – but all were taken by European photographers.

The museum wanted not only to break with stereotypical visions – “the exotic vision”, as she puts it - but to examine contemporary life as seen through a native’s lens.  

When asked if that means there is no universality to the art of photography, she chuckles.

“No, no, this not the family of man," she says. "This is really a completely different point of view. We don’t want to show pictures from all over the world, but artistic works made by people from all over the world. That’s why the exhibit doesn’t focus so much on the pictures, but on the artist, on the photographer, and what they see.”

The Photoquai is up until 22 November in Paris on the Quai Branly, close to the Eiffel Tower.