Ellen Carey & Tomas van Houtryve: Black and white, topographies

As Paris eagerly awaits the reopening, on 8 December, of Notre Dame de Paris, Galerie Miranda is proud to present works by Tomas van Houtryve, one of only three photographers granted access to the building site since 2019.  

Icon, architectural feat, religious sanctuary, subject and muse, Notre Dame embodies multiple meanings. Since the invention of photography in 1839, photographers have continued to photograph it, until the dramatic fire of April 15, 2019. Tomas Van Houtryve began photographing Notre Dame cathedral in 2009, first informally, then as part of a commission to follow the restoration work after the fire of 2019. Choosing to work with a 19th century wooden camera and the wet collodion process, Van Houtryve seeks parallels with the previous restoration of Notre Dame in the mid-19th century, carried out by the architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Inspired by the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai, Van Houtryve revisits the Parisian icon in unique and unexpected situations. With exceptional access to the building site and using a range of old and new techniques - from wet collodion and cyanotype to drone video and artificial intelligence - he questions and revisits the visual representations of Notre Dame.

“Tomas van Houtryve manages to portray the historical, architectural, spiritual, artistic and human greatness that Notre Dame represents.” ----- Pauline Vermare, preface to 'Thirty-Six Views of Notre Dame', Radius Books, due to be released in December (advance copies are currently available at the gallery).

Represented by baudoin lebon gallery, van Houtryve's work is presented alongside sculptural black & white photograms by Ellen Carey (1952, American) from her early series of darkroom experiments Dings & Shadows and Photogenic Drawing, represented by Galerie Miranda. Carey's abstract, sculptural silver gelatin photograms draw upon the artist's early experience of stained glass windows, and resonate with the lines and abstractions of the cathedral architecture and building site.

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“As a child I was raised Catholic, and stained-glass windows introduced me to the play of light and color. Ellen, my name, means bringer of light in Irish, Gaelic and Celtic, thus destiny and fate brought me to photography” ---- Ellen Carey, extract from Eye Prefer Paris 2018 interview. 

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