Jean-Claude Gautrand (1932 - 2019) has played a major role in the recognition and history of photography in France. Sharing Otto Steinert's vision of subjective photography, he founded the Gamma group in 1963, then the avant-garde Libre Expression group, before joining the Club des 30×40 (a club founded by Roger Doloy) in 1964, becoming its vice-president. In 1970, he was one of the very first members of the Rencontres d'Arles team, and from then on, alongside his photographic work, he worked as a journalist and historian of photography and curated exhibitions. He has written numerous books and is among those who have worked for the recognition of photography as an artistic expression. His association with the Musée Réattu dates to 1970, the year in which the Rencontres d'Arles was founded, and he began exhibiting there in 1971. For nearly fifty years, he was a tireless observer of this legendary festival, amassing an outstanding archive that was donated by his wife Josette Gautrand to the Musée Réattu's research and documentation centre in 2022. The focus of the exhibition is therefore twofold: Jean-Claude Gautrand the photographer, with a selection of over 350 photographs from 1957 to 2010 from the collections of the museum, the Rencontres d'Arles and, above all, Mrs Gautrand's collection; and Jean-Claude Gautrand, a key witness to the history of photography in Arles and beyond. His series, which range from the purely graphic like Métalopolis to the powerful like The Assassination of Baltard, from the conceptual like Le Galet to the intimate and painterly like Le Jardin de mon père, bear witness to the qualities and career of a great photographer.In 2024, the city of Arles and the Musée Réattu will be celebrating the most Arlesian of Parisian photographers.
"Photography is an “extra-ordinary” means of artistic expression. It's a device for capturing the world, dissecting it, uncovering it, and exalting it. It's a dream machine, a message machine. Photography is like a balm to the horror of things, it's a kind of delicious fruit full of dynamite, it's a trap! It can be a deadly and unscrupulous weapon for a suicide bomber, but also a salutary instrument for a lover of the world. It is a demanding mistress, tyrannical and forever unsatisfied, but it is also a source of joy, beauty, surprises and encounters. …” JCG
The museum is supported in all its actions by the association of friends and partners of the Réattu museum “With the Rhône in vis-à-vis”.
The work of Jean-Claude Gautrand is represented by the Les Douches gallery, Paris, and the ISO gallery, Arles.
Exhibition produced with the support of PICTO. Modern prints made by Thomas Consani & Fred Jourda and the Photographic Heritage Media Library.
The exhibition is part of the “Associated Arles” sequence of the Rencontres d’Arles
