“Mieux Photographier”: Franklin Azzi hosts Thomas Mailaender
When architecture and photography collide. Thomas Mailaender was invited by Franklin Azzi to take over his agency at 13, rue d’Uzès in Paris for a new exhibition titled “Mieux Photographier” (or “Better Photography”). “Mieux Photographier” is also the title of a manual of photography techniques published by Kodak in 1982 whose back cover reads: “500 photos including nearly 400 in color to lead you on the paths to creativity.” By quoting the book directly in the title of his exhibition, Mailaender offers a personal analysis of what photography is, a medium whose limits he continues to push with his innovative work. In Franklin Azzi’s space usually devoted to architecture, Mailaender presents two symmetrical pieces that question the limits of photography. The first, “Blue Corridor”, initially created for an exhibition at the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf in 2017, is a set of corridors made plasterboard on which images recovered from the Internet are reproduced. The installation “Greenhouse” features a series of photographs of sunsets, printed on the transparent walls of the greenhouse. Visitors are invited to enter and discover a collection of books with covers depicting sunsets, one of the most photographed motifs in the world. The exhibition runs through November 10th.
