Frank Horvat, Anna Karina, Les Halles, Paris, pour Jours de France, 1959. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.
Frank Horvat, «Forts» des Halles au bistrot, Paris, 1951. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.
Frank Horvat, Le Sphinx, Paris, 1956. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.
Frank Horvat, Affiches, près de la place Pigalle, Paris, 1956. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.
Frank Horvat, Paris au téléobjectif, circulation devant la gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, 1956. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.
Frank Horvat, Paris au téléobjectif, Saint-Lazare, 1956. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.
Frank Horvat, Mode dans le métro, Paris, pour Jardin des Modes, 1958. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.
Frank Horvat, Hall des trains de banlieue, gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, pour Réalités, 1959. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.
Frank Horvat, Logements en construction à Bobigny, banlieue de Paris, pour Réalités, 1959. Courtoisie du Studio Frank Horvat.

FRANK HORVAT

PARIS

April 1 – September 2, 2023

Born in 1928 in Italy, forced into exile by the Italian Fascist regime and its anti-Jewish laws, Frank Horvat spent his adolescence in Switzerland before heading out into the world, camera in hand. Paris became one of his first stops, where he made the decisive encounter with Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1951. Pakistan, India, Israel, Jordan and then London would follow, the subjects of his first reports and the objects of his first publications in the press. Settling in Paris in 1955, at the age of twenty-seven, he approached the city as a photojournalist.

The history of photography – and more broadly, of representations – is marked by these forced or voluntary displacements, these exiled views. What does a young man who grew up in the Swiss mountains and roamed India perceive of Paris? What imaginary does he project into the city’s outline? How will he invest the city’s light and shadow to make an image of it in his turn?

Frank Horvat, who passed away in 2020, produced an abundant body of work. The present exhibition is focused on the Parisian corpus of his work produced during the 1950s. Combining reporting and fashion series, it reveals a city caught between the back alleys of a past century and the large buildings of tomorrow, between mythical sites and the underworld. We will meet there lovers on the banks of the Seine, Anna Karina in a Dior dress in the middle of Les Halles, anonymous passers on crowded sidewalks, and Frank Horvat, fascinated by “the magic of the box”, walking back and forth between crowds and individuals, on the lookout for moments of intimacy that the urban vertigo hides so well.

Exhibition in collaboration with the Studio Frank Horvat.

Around the exhibition

OPENING
Friday, March 31, from 6pm in the presence of Fiammetta Horvat

GUIDED TOURS
Saturday April 1 & 29*, 4pm
Saturday June 3, 4pm
Tuesday June 6, 12:30 pm
Thursday June 29, 7pm
Saturday, September 2, 4pm

*dubbed in French sign language

WORKSHOP FOR CHILDREN
5/10 years old
with Sophie Grassart.
Sunday, April 2, 2:30 pm

MEETING
1950′-1960′ : Paris and its fashion stories
with Raphaëlle Stopin. Event proposed by the Société des amis.es
Thursday, April 13, 7pm

CINEMA EVENING
PARIS côté court
in partnership with the festival Le Courtivore.
Thursday, May 11, 8pm

CONFERENCE
The Photographers of the Réalités
by Anne de Mondenard, curator, doctor in art history,
Musée Carnavalet and Michel Guerrin, editor in chief, Le Monde.
Saturday June 3, 6pm

MEETING
A book : Side Walk by Frank Horvat
with Jordan Alves, éditions Xavier Barral, in collaboration with France Photo Book
Saturday, September 2, 6 pm

All events are free of charge, on reservation, and take place at the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie
info@centrephotographique.com