Galerie &CO119 is delighted to inaugurate a new exhibition format dedicated to photobooks, exploring for this first edition the theme of portraits.

If some see in the unique photographic print the most complete way to show their work, others see in the photographic book a more suited way to communicate their message and assert their vision.

thee photobook, if indeed made of photographs, becomes an object which reveals its subject with an ensemble of images put together in a particular order. It allows a narrative exploration and the theme evolves through the pages.

In this context, the influence and the vision of the photographer might be even stronger than in the classical print in the way that there are narrative choices, editing, sequencing, format, design, paper, layout and other elements that highly influence the outcome of the dialogue. Those are as many key elements that become part of a whole, which inevitably creates a paradoxe: sometimes, the subject is not the one in the photograph.  e whereabout is modified.  e portrait thus become portraits, in their plural forms.

For this exhibition, we selected a small amount of photobooks, some more famous than others, on the theme of the portrait. Di erent points of view and ways to approach the portrait can be seen : scienti c object, object of memory, pornographic, admisitrative identity, metaphorical,  fictional or real, all have nevertheless this in common that they reveal the work of the artists by the book and not with single images.

A way to (re)discover photography in a new angle, perhaps, we at least hope so.