.jpg "<p>Edward Weston (1886-1958), <em>Eel River ranch</em>, 1937, don de Jerome Hill, 1970 © Center for Creative Photography, The Univertsity of Arizona Foundation / ADAGP Paris 2017</p>")
In 2013, the Musée Réattu embarked on a large scale review of its rich photography department. Following two major retrospectives – The Clergues of Arles in 2014 and Dare photography in 2015 – the museum has now turned to thematic arrangements, which will show the collection in a new light each year. A cycle embracing the essential themes of art history, and covering issues such as the body, architecture and the portrait, continues today, with the theme of the landscape. For the Réattu is not only a museum and a monument, after all: it is also an exceptional view of the Rhone.
Through a selection of nearly 130 works from the museum’s collection, the exhibition Anatomy of a landscape sets out to illustrate the diversity of perspectives on the environment, whether natural or urban, wild or everyday. It retraces the endless quest of photographers as they seek out new models and highlights their capacity to invent landscapes.
Some artists celebrate the beauty and mystery of landscapes made famous by the great artists. They include Brigitte Bauer, photographing a Mount Sainte-Victoire haunted by the memory of Cézanne, and Alan Ross covering the great American natural parks, already sublimely captured by his master Ansel Adams. Others have carved out new photographic territory, like Robert Doisneau, who created a real aesthetic of the Parisian suburbs, or Ambroise Tézenas, whose work offers a fresh vision of some of the most tragic sites in contemporary history. Still others - from Lucien Clergue and his landscape-bodies to René Mächler and his Landscapes of women - have drawn out the subtle connection between body and nature. They have continually pushed the boundaries of a genre which was long considered minor, but has gone on be a true conquest of modern and contemporary art.
