Chromotherapia, a crazy story of color photography

Rome (Italy). When Maurizio Cattelan contacted Sam Stourdzé to submit the idea of ​​a book on a story of pop photography, Surréelle and Glamor, whom he wanted to design with him, the director of the Villa Medici was then in the midst of the exhibition “See color times.” The challenges of photography ”for the Center Pompidou-Metz. The creation of the book quickly led them “To also design an exhibition for the Villa Medici from a list of photographers, established on both sides, and brought back to 18 names”explains Sam Stourdzé. “The idea was to place the color of Toiletpaper In the field of the history of color photography from the 1930s to the present day. Because I think we are the sons of several fathers, and in the case of Toiletpaper of several photographers “underlines Maurizio Cattelan. It was therefore a question of comparing for the first time the images of the journal he created in 2010 with the advertising photographer and fashion Pierpaolo Ferrari, with those of photographers of generations and different horizons, some of renowned, others less in order to question their place in the history of color photography.

A well -established collaboration

Maurizio Cattelan and Sam Stourdzé have already collaborated together. The first time was in 2016 as part of the exhibition dedicated to Toiletpaperprogrammed at the Arles meetings that Sam Stourdzé directed. She presented some of the numbers with covers and images with saturated colors and put into surreal scenes. The second time that Sam Stourdzé invited the two creators of Toiletpaperit was in 2021-2022 at the Villa Medici whose reins he had taken, for a photo installation in the gardens, designed in concert with Martin byr from the images of the number Papeparr toiletmartinpublished in 2020.

With “Chromotherapia: The Feel Good-Color Photography”, Maurizio Cattelan and Sam Stourdzé offer a beginning of reflection on uses and perceptions as much as on the square and the consideration during almost a century of this color photograph which causes, disturbs both the intensity of its colors and by its uninhibited or subversive fictions. The catchy title of the exhibition “Chromotherapia”,-color therapy-, and the subtitle “the photography that makes you feel good”, are addressed as much to the one who looks at the image in question as to the one who created it.

Think about

“” In dark times that are currently living, the color is as necessary as a heroine shoot. We need to forget the daily problems; We need to think of something other than the current state of the world ”notes Maurizio Cattelan. Their selection has also dismissed photographers relating to the documentary and the great American or Italian masters of color photography. The place reserved for photographs of Toiletpaper is limited to a single side Wall Paper Review introducing each chapter, except for the chapter “Foodoroma” where photos of Pierpaolo Ferrari are juxtaposed with those of Martin Parr and the young Nigerian Ruth Ginika Ossai (1991).

The first rooms bringing together Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969) and Harold Edgerton (1903-1990) or Guy Bourdin and Hiro seduce, less the last part devoted to the portrait, too overloaded in photographs for the narrow configuration of space. It is above all the improbable and unprecedented association of photographers that makes the interest of this story of sketchy color photography. The catches of the cats of Walter Chandoha (1920-2019) and the dogs of William Wegman (born in 1943), beyond the playful aspect, was linked to two photographers belonging to distinct, waterproof and incompatible photographic worlds in the eyes of photo historians, at least until a little. Elsewhere, it is the association of the clichés of accidental cars made by the policeman Arnold Odermatt (1925-2021) for insurance with the disturbing fantastic scenes of the American Sandy Skoglund (born in 1946) which retained by the atmosphere of strangeness that their association creates.