Paris Photo 2025 : Zoé Isle de Beauchaine’s Highlights
Thank you to Zoé Isle de Beauchaine from The Eye of Photography for selecting Jeff Cowen's P217 as one of her highlights from the 28th edition of Paris Photo.
Photography Tested by Time, the Example of Jeff Cowen
Original text in French written by Phillippe Goudin and published by Le Club de Mediapart - Translated to English by Perplexity.
By exploring the far end of photographic possibilities, far from digital excesses or replicas of the "decisive moment," American photographer Jeff Cowen, whose photographs are presented at the WILLAS contemporary stand D50, exemplifies a photographic practice capable of withstanding time.
His interest in poetry, aesthetics, the patience of making, and the invisible world ultimately led him to explore a conceptual and experimental terrain of black-and-white analog photography, which is far from cold abstraction.
He is exhibited in the Voices sector (...) that honors more contemporary image authors at the Fair around one of the two themes chosen this year: landscapes. WILLAS contemporary has chosen to present Jeff Cowen's Provence Work series, a true solo exhibition, haunted by the presence of great painters who walked the lands of Montagne Sainte-Victoire, where the photographer was able to stay.
In a world dominated by digital screens, technology, speed, and overproduction, Cowen seeks to draw our attention to the simple beauty of nature. He deliberately stays away from the digital world and favors a handcrafted approach to the photographic process, notably using enlargers he made himself to create large analog prints on thick, wavy photographic paper. Each work is a unique analog photograph, enriched by forty years of darkroom practice, including painting and collage.
The chemistry of the darkroom during manual printing plays an important role and gives some works a muted pictorial presence haunted by Cézanne’s footsteps and Van Gogh’s flashes. The motif almost disappears – sometimes reminding one of Philippe Jaccottet’s poetry in L’approche des montagnes: "The more I think about it, the more I am sure that the moment when these mountains amaze me is precisely when they are barely visible: it is their lightness of mist that obsess me."