“SUN AND SHADOW” Pierre VALLET
15 | 02 | 14
Sun and Shadow
Pierre Valet, photographer
23 February to 26 April 2014.
For someone who expresses himself through the language of light (photographos), Marcel Breuer’s architecture at Flaine is a mine of potential. It can be seen as an exercise in style, an infinite array of images and a continuation of light itself.
The renowned architect Louis Isadore Kahn wrote: ‘I sense Light as the giver of all presences, and materiel as spent Light.’ This concept has become my motivating force for communicating through imagery; shades of black and white best expressing the differing colors and texture.
The buildings of Flaine bring out the richness of the play of light on the faces of a diamond. The space between two buildings is what fascinates me the most and that is what initially caught my eye.
The way the light moves - with shade being projected from the balcony railings - represents the essence of ‘Sun and Shadow’ a principal which appears throughout Breuer’s work. The images presented here are the fruits of a study; they can be used as elements to investigate the ‘influence of light on the manner in which architecture works’.
This exhibition coincides with the release of the book Marcel Breuer à Flaine*.
‘For Marcel Breuer, it was a way to break up the horizontal lines of the buildings. These buildings were designed and constructed by humans, and contrast starkly with the chaotic nature of the surrounding mountains. He wanted to integrate his work into Flaine’s wild and beautiful natural landscape and provide a humanizing presence.’
From ‘Flaine, la Création’ by Eric Boissonnas, Editions du Linteau, Paris, 1994.
Pierre Vallet, Annecy, November 2013
* By Bénédicte Chaljub, CAUE 74, Annecy 2014
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Pierre Vallet lives and works in Lyon. He obtained a scholarship from La Fondation Nationale de la Photographie in 1980 and was winner of the Villa Medicis Horsles-Murs prize in 1990 and 1993.
He works regularly in collaboration with CAUE 74 and provided photographs for the book Marcel Breuer à Flaine, which is to be released in February 2014 and which inspired this exhibition.