To mark the centenary of Sabine Weiss's birth (1924-2021), Photo Elysée is presenting an exhibition that pays tribute to the photographer and has invited Nathalie Boutté to engage in dialogue with her work.
A major figure in French humanist photography, Sabine Weiss was not only a street, fashion, and advertising photographer but also a photojournalist for numerous international magazines. Over the course of sixty years, she explored all aspects of her profession.
In contrast to Sabine Weiss, who built her body of work by photographing on the street or undertaking studio commissions, Nathalie Boutté creates paper works, inspired by images produced by important photographers. Her process is meticulous: she cuts hundreds of strips of paper bearing texts related to the chosen image—here, quotes from Sabine Weiss—before assembling them to reconstruct the original photograph. The grayscale tones of the paper strips create gradients, similar to pixels on a digital screen. Up close, the text on the paper strips is revealed, but it is by stepping back that the image is revealed. By opening the photographer's archives to Nathalie Boutté's gaze, Photo Elysée unveils an unknown aspect of Sabine Weiss's work, notably her studio work.
www.elysee.ch/expositions/sabine-weiss-2/
