The death of Régis Durand, defender of the contemporary image
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Régis Durand will have been among those who accompanied and carried the recognition of contemporary photography in France, at the end of the 20th century.e century: this Anglicist by training had left the university world to devote himself to contemporary image, becoming the first director of the Jeu de Paume, in Paris, an institution devoted to photography. He died on August 25, at the age of 80.
Born on December 5, 1941 in Sarlat-la-Canéda, in the Dordogne, he first specialized in American literature and cinema, which he taught in Bordeaux and Lille, also devoting a thesis to the Briton D. H. Lawrence. Régis Durand is also an art critic for the magazine ArtPress, where he is in charge of photography. The latter, from the 1980s, found a new place in France in the market and institutions. Having become an inspector at the Visual Arts Delegation at the Ministry of Culture, Régis Durand supports a new generation of photographers who distance themselves from reportage or documentary photography and from traditional black and white, to flirt with contemporary art: formats, colors, images that go beyond the frame, draw on installation, sculpture…
Open the field of photography
It is this photography called “visual artist” that he highlights at the Le Printemps de Cahors festival (Lot), of which he will be the artistic director from 1992 to 1997, inviting authors such as Stéphane Couturier, Thomas Ruff, Eric Poitevin, Patrick Tosani… whom he mixes with more classical authors. Above all, he wants to open up the field of photography by mixing it with installations and videos. He also wrote several theoretical books on photography, including The Pensive Gaze and Picture time (1988 and 1995, La Différence), where he explains how the field of photography has become fragmented.
Régis Durand: “Photography can speak remarkably about the world, with multiple proposals, provided it offers a reflection on what the image can do and on its forms”
In 1996, he replaced the pioneer publisher Robert Delpire at the head of the National Center of Photography (CNP), where he had made known many classical authors in France. Régis Durand redirects the place towards contemporary creation, but by playing the appeasement between the different currents: “The opposition between visual artists, photographers of reality, reporters no longer makes sense, he then declares to World. Photography can speak remarkably of the world, with multiple proposals, provided it offers a reflection on what the image can do and on its forms. »
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