Bernard Plossu, wandering beat – Liberation

Prints by the French photographer, capturing the people he encountered across the American West between 1966 and 1985, are being shown for the first time in Paris. We discover him sparkling and close to people.

Photographer Lewis Baltz wrote this famous phrase about his friend Bernard Plossu: “There is something overtly romantic about the image of a French photographer reading Céline in a Ford parked overnight on the lunar plateau of Monument Valley.” And it’s true that we imagine him, the romantic Bernard Plossu, behind all the small prints of his “American years”, found in a box, and shown for the first time at the Fab. We imagine him elated and enthusiastic, the Nikkormat around his neck and the sunglasses on his nose, facing the American West. Happy driving his old Oldsmobile convertible.

The French photographer traveled extensively in the United States from 1966 to 1985, he even settled in New Mexico and had a son there, Shane, on July 14, 1978 in Taos. Then he left the country and distanced himself. In this small exhibition in the form of a black and white tracking shot, which surveys New Mexico and Arizona up to the Californian coast, it is a Plossu beat and sparkling that we discover, tender, surprisingly close to people, sometimes mischievous.

Three cowboys in a row

The photographer’s gaze clings to street scenes: a black mother hugging her child with a huge smile, a white man amazed by his infant whom he carries at arm’s length, pretty girls in tight shorts, a woman with a pirate’s eyepatch, three cowboys in a row leaning against a pick-up. But Bernard Plossu also catches in his c