Watching TV

Olivier Culmann photographs people watching TV. And their TV sets. The viewers’ eyes are glued to the screen, hypnotized by the images that flicker by. Olivier Culmann captures that instant during which attention subsides and consciousness slumbers, rocked to sleep by the phosphorescence of the cathode ray tubes. At that instant, their bodies often become comfortable, they curl up on the couch and then collapse. Nothing could be more banal. And nothing more unsettling. Because that is how, in quasi-immobile passivity, when the brain has gone numb, that we television viewers receive the world in its entirety. Not the real world, but an image of that world, a ghostly version of reality. The news, comedy series, broadcasts from the other ends of the planet, or from just downstairs, are plopped down before our anaesthetized eyes. Their impact is enormous. During that time during which existence is deadened, that may last a few minutes or several hours, our ideas about others evolve and are transformed. Our preconceptions collapse and others replace them, inexorably. Morocco, India, the United States, Mexico, Nigeria, United Kingdom, China, France : TV viewers in those countries receive news about each other without ever meeting. As they sit in front of the TV set, we get the feeling we know them. Looking at them, Olivier Culmann is looking at us.
Cécile Cazenave, journalist.
Tendance Floue is a collective of twelve photographers. It was created in 1991 and was founded upon the principle of independence, so as to guarantee the liberty of each member. Forever exploring the world against the grain of a westernized image, revealing the hidden side of exposed issues, capturing unique moments: the collective’s force of attraction inspires the photographers to venture into unknown territories, and to bring back the material which directly fuels shared photographic research projects. Documentaries for the press, publications, exhibitions, projections, the selling of photographs, business and institutional communications: the collective opens every door and experiments with every medium of contemporary photography, without taboos. For more than fifteen years, an indefinable alchemy of ideas and energies have made it possible not only to create a new and original photographic language, but also to question the photojournalistic tendencies and attempt to renew the field of narration. Beyond their individual approaches, the twelve photographers, in a collective spirit, have launched into a photographic adventure of a different order, all-encompassing and akin to performance. Comparing pictures, putting others together, forming combinations: work which is done together engenders new organic matter.
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Pupils up to 15 yrs of age: 3 euro