Mark Steinmetz

1987268Jane FondaJean Seberg Jean-Luc GodardOtto PremingerCamargo FoundationVirginia WoolfPaul SignacAndre DerainRaoul DufyFrdric Mistral19871987

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“In the summer of 1987, I was 26 years old, a couple years out of graduate school, and living in a derelict apartment outside of Boston. I had received an artists residency in the South of France, and so, in August, I flew to Paris. I stayed a few weeks with close family friends in a top floor apartment on the Avenue de Wagram. My friends were working in fashion and film, and I was told my bed had once belonged to Jane Fonda before she became Barbarella. The weather was getting colder, and they gave me a brown corduroy jacket to wear that Jean Seberg (Godards Breathless, Premingers Bonjour Tristesse) had cried on. I would eat some breakfast and run around Paris photographing all dayhardly eating because I had no moneyreturning to their apartment for dinner and a glass of champagne. Later in the year, I went to the South to begin my artists residency at the Camargo Foundation, in Cassis, a town on the sea not far from Marseille. The writer Virginia Woolf, the pointillist Paul Signac, the fauvists Andr Derain and Raoul Dufy, and the Provenal poet Frdric Mistral, had spent extended periods of time in Cassis. I took day trips from Cassis to Arles, Aix, Marseille, and Nice, and could process my film in the simple darkroom that was supplied to me. In 1987, there were no cell phones or digital cameras. To meet up with someone you had to set a time and a place and each of you had to stick to the plan. The seasons seemed to linger around more, and in general, everyone seemed to have more time. The parks, museums, and subways were less crowded. The rhythm of daily life was more relaxed. People were worried in 1987, but not as worried as we are now.From the Introduction by Mark Steimetz

This wonderful collection of previously unpublished photographs by Mark Steinmetz, made some 35 years ago during an extended stay in the South of France, provides welcome insight into his earliest years as a working artist. It comprises over 60 photographs beautifully printed in duotone on Japanese Kasadaka art paper, and bound in Burgundy linen.