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Eames & Hollywood
Collection "ADAM"
ISBN: 9782875720177
(HB - E/ F/ NL)
€
239 unknown and unpublished photographs taken by Charles Eames over the years on Billy Wilder's films settings are exhibited at ADAM for the first time ever.
The audience will discover the magic behind the scene, and what means the industry of cinema. Additionally, the cinephile will also discover Wilder's film sets and play in recognizing, here, a set of Sabrina (1954), or there, the outdoor locations of A Ace in the Hole (1951).
Designers Charles and Ray Eames always practiced photography, a facet of their work less well known than their exceptional furniture (still in production) and architecture in Santa-Monica (Cal.). But, their photographic opera, amounting to more than 750,000 images, projected on screens as media installation, far from having a merely documentary value, represent an exceptional work of art that demands to be re-discovered.
Among the numerous series of photography they realized, one series entitled Movie-Sets forges the exhibition Eames & Hollywood. The series taken by Charles Eames is entirely dedicated to the film sets and the natural settings chosen by his friend, the world acclaimed film director Billy Wilder, for his own movies. Armed with his trusty camera, Charles was continuously taking photographs of very high pictorial quality. He realized less portraits of actors such as Audrey Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart in the set of Sabrina or Kirk Douglas in the natural decor of the mountains in Ace in the Hole (Wilder's favorite movie) than of the extras, the assistants, the make-up designers, technicians at work, the focus on the devices, machines, smoke engine, etc.
Eames's photographs are fascinating. Movie-Sets is not the work realized by a set photographer on a film set, but it is the work of an artist. His photographs catch the magic of the movie making of course, but they do reach greatness with their abstract atmosphere served by elegant compositions.
Eames & Hollywood is also a book.
For the first time, the work of the Eames will be presented from a photographical and artistic perspective. The book will include three essays: on the photographic work of the Eames, on the films by Wilder and on the relations between the cinema industry and design. Richly illustrated, Eames & Hollywood will display the complete series of Movie-Set and it will also be accompanied by a new selection of photographs from the Eames Collection.
Collective book under the supervision of:
Alexandra Midal is an independent exhibition curator. Her curatorial projects include: Politique-Fiction; Tomorrow Now: When Design Meets Sci-Fi; Marguerite Humeau's 'The Things?', Noam Toran's 'Things Uncommon', Superstudio's 'Surface Radicale', and works by Carlo Mollino. She holds a doctorate in art history, and has been the director of the FRAC Haute-Normandie, an assistant to Dan Graham, and is currently a lecturer at the Haute École Art et Design (HEAD) in Geneva. She has notably published: Design, l'anthologie; Antidesign; and Design. Introduction à l'histoire d'une discipline and ADAM, The Plastic Collection.
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. The eye of a big name in design on the Hollywoodian golden age.
. Unpublished pictures of the cinema industry behind stage: actors, movie-sets.
. The book is linked to the eponym exhibition, organized from March, 10th to September 04th, 2016 at the Art and Design Atomium Museum (ADAM), Brussels.
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