The Michael Hoppen Gallery welcomes a wonderful exhibition exploring two very different perspectives on a city theme. Vintage prints documenting Doisneau’s sixty year love affair with Paris and its inhabitant will be shown alongside urban portraits and nudes by Jason Langer

Robert Doisneau’s name and iconic images have become synonymous with what we know of 1940s Parisian street life. Doisneau’s Paris is full of individuals and personalities- they react, respond and converse with one another- and their backdrop is one of the most familiar cityscapes in the world.

His great ability was to capture the ordinary and make it both extraordinary and memorable -a couple in a bistro, an accordion player or a woman reacting in shock to a painting in a gallery window. His acute awareness as to how his camera could capture a moment of emotion still informs advertising and magazine content today, and his empathy and understanding of urban life created some of the most iconic photo-story images taken in the 20th Century.

Jason Langer on the other hand captures a city full of secrets. His images depict individuals whose identities are hidden or are portrayed in an anonymous, elusive manner- concealed by semi-darkness, blurred, expression blank, backs turned, or veiled by clothing. The meaning of the photograph is not apparent but hinted at, as Langer feels “that people prefer to create their own story and find their own meaning, instead of having it spelled out for them.”
Langer’s interiors and cityscapes share a sense of privacy and anonymity, yet the exterior scenes are imbued with identifiable mental and emotional sense of place- a city we all recognise yet cannot identify, at once ageless and contemporary. Our exhibition includes work from New York, Paris and London.

From 25th November to 20th January 2009.

Free entrance