Bernard Plossu

From California to New Mexico. American Southwest 1966—1985

Curator: Agnès de Gouvion Saint-Cyr

Presented by the Artist and the European House of Photography, Paris

Supported by the Embassy of France in Russia

Paris kid at the end of the 50’s , we were going to see, my father and I, Westerns movies at the movie theatres! This was my first contact with the USA: wide-opened spaces on the cinemascope screens.

Then at 14 years old, in 1959, arrive the records of Elvis Presley! crazy! all my generation listens and dances!

From 1961 to 65, jazz was what mattered: we were going to the concerts at the Olympia Theatre, to see Monk, the jazz Messengers, or in jazz clubs like the Chat qui Peche or the Blue Note in Paris: again American culture!

In 1966, American friends met in Mexico, where I had gone as a student, take me for the summer on the Californian coast of Big Sur, and in Haight — Ashbury in San Francisco: I am right at the very start of the Hippie movement, spending time also with Beatniks from the generation before mine. And thus, all my culture of young frenchman was.... American! Of all that summer of 1966, I took lots of pictures, met Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg etc .... ! Finally, that’s the way I became a photographer.

In the 70’s, I also photographed the USA a lot, for my job, having become bilingual. And in 1977 I got married there, and on July 14th 1978 was born my first son , Shane . Then for years I wandered about the American Southwest, looking for the landscapes of these westerns that had haunted my childhood, on the footsteps of Apache chiefs Cochise and Geronimo! This way I became a hiker, and photographed these wide spaces, but in small prints: ‘The garden of dust’.

Then in 1985, I leave forever. I come back in Europe. And I have thousands of pictures of the American West, on the roads, in cities, in nature, photographing places, women, young people of the new Californian generation: here are for you these photos, in this exhibition.

Bernard Plossu

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