Lola, Sydney, Australia, 2005 . Pigment print.

Titouan Lamazou
Women
February 20 - March 27, 2010

Opening Reception for the Artist:
Saturday, February 20th
6:30 - 8:30 pm
Adamson Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new photographs by Titouan Lamazou. Lamazou is an artist but also a documentarian, ethnographer, and it might be argued, an activist and humanitarian. For six years, Lamazou has traveled the world photographing 230 women and recording their biographies. The resulting images are beautiful and sometimes haunting. They reveal an artist that has a unique eye into the experiences of the peoples he encounters.

Titouan Lamazou has been voyaging around the globe nearly his entire life. Born in 1955 in Morocco, at age seventeen he decided to be a navigator and spent the next several years sailing on the seas of the world. In 1990, he won the Vendée Globe, a race around the world. Long accustomed to documenting the people and sites he encountered on his travels via photography, drawing, painting and even film, Lamazou decided to embark on his current project in 2001 and was named a United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization "Artist for Peace," a title that reinforces the humanitarian aspect of his project. The result is a collection of photographs, sketches and video recordings, which have been exhibited worldwide and collected into several catalogues published by Gallimard, as well as shown on short segments on French television.


Katrine and Noris, Cali, Columbia, 2005. Pigment print.

At Adamson Gallery, Lamazou will be exhibiting some of the photographs from the project, beautifully rendered as large-scale digital prints. Each shot has hyper resolution and perspective, which Lamazou achieves by shooting as many as 200 images for each scene, which are then constructed into a mimetic image. This gives the resulting large format print a viewpoint that cannot be approximated by any camera lens and more closely mimics how we view scenes. Although each photograph tells a compelling story, their presence alongside one another is a powerful commentary on the commonalities and differences of experience around the globe.

Lamazou has the gift of rendering images that are remarkably full of narrative. Each woman poses in her own environment, surrounded by items that hint at the circumstances surrounding her life. In the photograph, "Lola, Sydney Australia, 2005," both the subject and her domestic surroundings are clad in leopard print. Behind her hangs a large portrait of the musician Jimi Hendrix, and above her head, a chandelier draped in foliage. Her head is titled slightly towards a barely visible window. We do not know anything about Lola, but we are compelled by what has been revealed. "Daniela, Bulgaria, 2006" is photographed with several children, looking over her shoulder as she walks to a dilapidated shack hung with sheets for insulation. Her story is all too familiar, but personalized in a unique way in the context of the other photographs. Together, the images begin to tell the story of the experience of women throughout the world.

To view more images from the exhibition, please visit our website. For more information, please contact Laurie Adamson or Erin Boland at (202) 232-0707 or email gallery@adamsongallery.com.
ADAMSON GALLERY
1515 fourteenth street nw
washington dc 20005

tel: 202.232.0707
web:www.adamsongallery.com

hours of operation:
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