L'oeil Urbain Photographic Festival 2019

April 5 - May 19, 2019 in Corbeilles Essonnes, France

For its seventh edition, L'OEil Urbain Photographic Festival questions a major event: the Brexit. It's the story of a fractured identity - and the repercussions it implies on a national and individual level - that we want to question through a dozen of exhibitions exploring the United Kingdom, from the 1980s to the present day. The deadline seems close and blurry: yet, at the time of the inauguration of the exhibitions on April 5th, the United Kingdom will probably no longer be part of the European Union.

From London to Belfast via Liverpool, British expatriates or those who risk their lives to cross the Channel, L'Oeil Urbain invites you to discover the United Kingdom from the 1980s to the dawn of Brexit with the following exhibitions:

Jean-Christophe Béchet, Frenchtown
Stéphane Duroy, Distress
Yan Morvan, Anarchie au Royaume-Uni (Anarchy in the UK)
Gilles Favier, Belfast
Rip Hopkins, Another Country
Matt Stuart, All That Life Can Afford
Olivier Jobard, Le Rêve anglais (English Dream)
Cyril Abad, Back to Blackpool
Ken Grant, A Topical Times for these Times
Jeanne Frank, Planète Z
Agence Ostkreuz, 30e anniversaire de la chute du mur de Berlin (30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall)

The Festival will open on Friday 5, 2019
Meet the photographers on Saturday 6, 2019

12h00 Encounter with Cyril Abad – Rue du Trou Patrix
12h30 Encounter with Matt Stuart – Parvis de l'Hôtel de Ville
14h30 Encounter with Jeanne Frank and Ken Grant – Square Crété
15h00 Encounter with the photographers of Ostkreuz Agency – Kiosque à musique
16h00 Encounter with Laurent Laliberté, Director of the Musée français de la Photographie – Médiathèque Chantemerle
16h45 Encounter with Jean-Christophe Béchet, Stéphane Duroy and Olivier Jobard – Commanderie Saint-Jean
18h00 Encounter with Yan Morvan – Galerie d'art municipale
19h00 Encounter with Gilles Favier and Rip Hopkins – Théâtre de Corbeil-Essonnes
20h30 Special evening L'Oeil Urbain

Michael Joseph: Lost & Found

By Michael Joseph

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2024 | 144 pages

Lost & Found documents a contemporary American subculture of young Travelers through raw, striking portraiture and intimate storytelling. These Travelers abandon home to move around the country by hitchhiking and freight train hopping in a nomadic, transient existence outside of mainstream society. Along their personal journey driven by wanderlust, escapism, or a search for transient jobs, they find a new family in their traveling friends.

The high of freedom, however, does not come without consequence. The black and white portraits are made in public, on the street, using natural light. Individual stories, as a collection, form a greater narrative. Over ten years in the making, Joseph’s portraits reveal the human condition. They capture courage, tenderness, and determination in his subjects that have been largely ignored and unseen.

An incredible book that we highly recommend! All About Photo

All About Michael Joseph

Nick Brandt: Sink / Rise, The Day May Break: Chapter Three

By Nick Brandt

Publisher : Hatje Cantz

2024 | 120 pages

Through his widely acclaimed work, English photographer Nick Brandt (1964) addresses pressing environmental issues, consistently highlighting mankind’s impact upon the natural world. His work is truly a fusion of artistry and activism, and he is best known for capturing the majestic landscapes of Africa as well as intimate portraits of its wildlife. Sink / Rise is the third chapter of The Day May Break, an ongoing global series portraying ecological degradation and destruction. This chapter adopts a slightly different approach than its predecessors: taking humans, rather than animals or landscapes, as his subjects. Sink / Rise focuses on South Pacific Islanders impacted by rising oceans from climate change. The people in these photos, photographed underwater in the ocean off the coast of the Fijian islands, are local representatives of the many people whose homes, land and livelihoods will be lost in the coming decades as the water rises. In Brandt’s images, the Islanders sit down at tables, stand on chairs and embrace―all the while, their pinched expressions reveal the desperation of their asphyxiating condition.

All About Nick Brandt

Lisa McCord: Rotan Switch

By Lisa McCord:

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2024 | 204 pages

Rotan Switch is the first monograph by Lisa McCord, documenting life on her grandparents’ cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta community of Rotan. It takes its name from the community’s central landmark—the railroad switch where farmers loaded their cotton bales onto trains headed out of the Delta. Although it hasn’t been used in years, it remains a potent symbol of the complex intersections of industry and agriculture, of race and injustice. Collected over the last forty-four years, these images and stories are a reflection on the people and places that have taught McCord the meaning of the word home. It is also a self-exploration into her inherently complicated role in this community as both the photographer and the granddaughter of the farm owner.
This publication is a long-term project, constructed from McCord's analog photographs, family snapshots and ephemera. Including, monochrome photographs, color polaroids, and recipes.

Christer Strömholm

By Christer Strömholm

Publisher : Dewi Lewis Publishing

2024 | 296 pages

Christer Strömholm is recognised as one of the major figures of 20th century European photography. Strömholm captured his surroundings in black‐and‐white images that display his integrity, understated humour and a highly personal aesthetic. With an unmistakable sensitivity to human suffering, based on his personal experience, he took photography in a new direction. Sean O’Hagan, writing in The Guardian, has described him “as the father of Swedish photography both for his abiding influence and for his role as a teacher.”

L'oeil Urbain Photographic Festival 2019

April 5 - May 19, 2019 in Corbeilles Essonnes, France

All about the Festival

Selected Books