Mark Steinmetz: France 1987
This captivating compilation of previously unreleased photographs by Mark Steinmetz, captured some 35 years ago during an extensive sojourn in the South of France, offers valuable insights into his formative years as a practicing artist. The collection features over 60 photographs exquisitely reproduced in duotone on Japanese Kasadaka art paper, elegantly bound in Burgundy linen. It constitutes a special edition limited to 150 copies, each numbered and signed by the artist, and presented in a custom-made slipcase.
“In the summer of 1987, at the age of 26, a couple of years after completing graduate school, I found myself dwelling in a dilapidated apartment outside Boston. I had been granted an artist’s residency in the South of France, and thus, in August, I boarded a flight to Paris. For a few weeks, I stayed with close family friends in a top-floor apartment on Avenue de Wagram. My hosts, immersed in the realms of fashion and film, shared that my bed had once belonged to Jane Fonda before her Barbarella days. As the weather cooled, they lent me a brown corduroy jacket, once wept upon by Jean Seberg (of Godard’s ‘Breathless’ and Preminger’s ‘Bonjour Tristesse’). I’d grab a quick breakfast and spend the entire day capturing photographs around Paris, often skipping meals due to financial constraints, only to return to their apartment for dinner and a glass of champagne.
Later that year, I ventured to the South to commence my artist’s residency at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, a coastal town near Marseille. Noteworthy figures like writer Virginia Woolf, pointillist Paul Signac, fauvists André Derain and Raoul Dufy, and Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral had spent extended periods in Cassis. I embarked on day trips from Cassis to Arles, Aix, Marseille, and Nice, and had the convenience of processing my film in the basic darkroom supplied to me.
In 1987, the absence of cell phones and digital cameras meant arranging meetings required setting a time and place, with adherence to the plan essential. Seasons seemed to linger longer, and people, in general, appeared to have more time. Parks, museums, and subways were less crowded. The daily rhythm was more unhurried. While concerns existed in 1987, they were not as pronounced as the anxieties we face today.” – Excerpt from the Introduction by Mark Steinmetz
About the Author
Mark Christopher Steinmetz, born in 1961, is an American photographer known for capturing black and white images of “ordinary people in the ordinary landscapes they inhabit.”
Steinmetz’s works have been featured in a group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1993/1994. He has also had solo exhibitions at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in 2015, the High Museum of Art in 2018, and at Fotohof in Salzburg, Austria, in 2019. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
His photographs are part of the collections at the Art Institute of Chicago, Hunter Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Steinmetz was born in New York City and raised in the Boston suburbs of Cambridge and Newton until the age of 12. He later moved to the Midwest and, at the age of 21, began studying photography at the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. After one semester, he left the MFA program and, in mid-1983, at the age of 22, moved to Los Angeles in search of the photographer Garry Winogrand, whom he befriended. In 1999, he relocated to Athens, Georgia, and as of 2017, he continued to live and work there.
Steinmetz’s photographs depict “ordinary people in the ordinary landscapes they inhabit” and are taken “in the midst of activity.” While most of his work is based in the USA, he has also captured images in Berlin, Paris, and Italy. His books combine portraits that are portrait-like yet spontaneous, candid photos of people, as well as images of animals and still life. Steinmetz predominantly uses black and white film, usually medium format, which he develops and prints in his own darkroom. He has maintained a consistent approach, using the same film, chemicals, and cameras since the mid-1980s.
