PARIS.- In the collective imaginary, High Kabylia, the mountainous region of northern Algeria, is the symbol of a certain kind of resistance to imperialism, colonization, domination and terror of all ages. It’s as if the ferruginous nature of its soil had forged the steely character of its inhabitants.
Explore the captivating work of Marjaana Kella through this stunning collection of her photographs. Available on Amazon.
Born in Geneva in 1977, Karim Kal, the grandson of Kabyle parents, is not embarking on an autobiographical or personal journey. The project he developed for the Prix HCB is rather rooted in the research he begun two decades ago in places shaped by political power – prisons, hospitals, suburbs –.
Deeply influenced by the abstract painting vocabulary of the second half of the 20th century, Kal has developed an immediately recognizable style. Mainly photographing at night, using a powerful flashlight, he reveals certain details and lets others disappear into the darkness. He sculpts reality with light.
Far from the informational overload to which we’ve become accustomed by mainstream media, he slows things down, selects what’s important, and thus proposes a critical but equally poetic form of asceticism. In so doing, he redefines the documentary contract that is inherent to photographic language.
Karim Kal is the 13th recipient of the Prix HCB, which he was given in 2023 by a jury of 6 cultural and photographic professionals.
Awarded every two years by the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, the HCB Award is a creative grant of 35,000 euros enabling a photographer to carry out or pursue an ambitious project. It results in an exhibition at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and a publication.
Born in 1977 in Switzerland, French-Algerian photographer Karim Kal lives in Samoëns in Haute-Savoie. Karim Kal studied at the Grenoble School of Fine Arts and the Vevey School of Photography (Switzerland). He first developed an interest in the portrait genre, before photographing public spaces, primarily at night. However, his work always revolves around the human presence, focusing on the traces left by culture and history.
His work has recently been exhibited at the Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, England), La Galerie (Noisy-le-Sec), Les Magasins Généraux (Pantin), the Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon and the Musée d’Art Moderne d’Alger (MAMA). His work has been included in the collections of the Fonds national d’art contemporain, the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain of Saint-Etienne Métropole (MAMC+), the FRAC Auvergne and the Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration.
Curator of the exhibition: Clément Chéroux Directeur, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
Marjaana Kella: L'envers du portrait
“I chose the portrait as my subject…”. For almost thirty years now, the presence of the other in the image, its subtle and mysterious emanation, has been at the heart of Finnish photographer Marjaana Kella’s work.
What does it mean to make a portrait? Between 1997 and 2001, she produced portraits of people under hypnosis. Her aim was to explore the discrepancy between inner state and outer appearance. In the same period, she also photographed subjects facing away from the camera.
She knows that in traditional portraiture, the face, the eyes and expression are the focus of attention. “The face of the Other calls me to respond”, wrote Emmanuel Levinas.
By obliterating this mark of presence in the world, Kella seeks to draw attention to the image itself. What is a photograph? Experimental methods involve changing parameters of the experiment in order to identify how those affect the outcome.
This is precisely what Kella does with the process of representation. She questions the way portraits are done, but also the way we look at them.
In 2002, renowned Dutch publishing house Van Zoetendaal published a book featuring the series exhibited at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.
This now cult volume was featured in the famous volume The Photobook: A History (vol.2) by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger.
Marjaana Kella is a Finnish visual artist, researcher and educator who has worked in the field of photographic practice for the last three decades and is currently teaching photography and contemporary art at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki. Most often her work intertwines with the ontological character of photography and its ability to make visible the pictorial nature of the world. Kella’s photographic works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally including venues in e.g. Centre Photographique d’Île de France, Fundación BBK Bilbao, Tate Modern London, Museum Folkwang, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and Helsinki City Art Museum.
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