At the occasion of the French May Arts Festival 2023, Boogie Woogie Photography & PhotogStory are pleased to present “French+,” a group exhibition at the Loft in Wong Chuk Hang from 4th May to 3rd June 2023 together with the prestigious Kraemer Gallery from Paris presenting 18th-century French museum quality furniture and decorative art.

+ means more and extra, which also denotes infinite possibilities. French+ is not just about French art but also language, culture, and lifestyle. 

The exhibition comprises eleven French photographers and artists’ artworks. It is our first time exhibiting paintings with acclaimed Monaco-based expressionist painter Philippe Pastor. Using living matter, its transformation through time and immediate surroundings, combining soil, pigments, minerals, and plants of all kinds, Philippe Pastor represents his vision of life, environmental destruction, and Man’s involvement in society.

We are also happy to be representing Elsa Jeandedieu, Hong Kong-based muralist. On view is a personal tondo, inspired by the Mediterranean Sea, made of plaster and copper leaves.

Florence Levillain’s creative and humorous photos are eye-catching among the photography artworks. She takes the French expressions as inspirations and literally turns the metaphor phrases into pictures. This imaginative photography series aims to raise awareness of the lyricism and humor of French language metaphors. 

Additionally, French+ can be interpreted as a diverse photography style, like Sabine Weiss’s Dior dress, Willy Ronis’s Paris impression, Raymond Cauchetier’s Hong Kong journey, and Thierry Cohen’s surreal starry sky images, which represent the rich and unique French photography culture.

FRENCH+ 

Date: 4 May – 3 June 2023 

Time: 2-7pm (Wednesday – Saturday)

Address: The Loft, 8/F, E. Wah Factory Building, 

56-60 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang. 

About Boogie Woogie Photography 

Boogie Woogie Photography is a company founded in Hong Kong in 2016 to promote photography in Asia. The mission is to act as a platform for galleries, collectors, companies, and photographers aiming to develop photography projects in Hong Kong and Asia. 

About PhotogStory

PhotogStory is an online Photography platform and Guest Curator based in Hong Kong. We focus on stories of local and international photographers, and stories behind classic photos.

Artists Profile

Bogdan Konopka (b. Poland, 1953-2019)

Born in Poland and an immigrant to Paris in 1989, Bogdan Konopka has been photographing cities he visits or lives in from Europe to China. His images are immediately recognizable whether the subjects are a fragment of nature or an interior space. Using large format or pinhole cameras, Konopka pays close attention to the quality of his photographs. His hand-made gelatin silver prints on chlorobromide paper are mostly contact prints, which have the same size as the original negative to achieve perfection. Konopka’s work was collected by Musée National d’Art Moderne and Centre Georges Pompidou, etc.

Elsa Jeandedieu (b. France,1983)

Hong Kong-based French muralist and visual artist Elsa Jeandedieu has been spreading her creative talents and bringing her beautiful, unique texture artworks and wall murals to spaces from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Paris, Italy, and beyond. Her inspiring energy and creativity have resulted in commissioned wall designs, artworks, and luxury art pieces for many high-profile clients, including CHANEL and Victoria’s Secret. Elsa moved to Hong Kong in 2008 and launched her eponymous atelier, Elsa Jeandedieu Studio, in 2015, where she now heads up a team of dedicated artists. 

Florence Levillain (b. France, 1970)

Florence Levillain began an independent career as a reportage photographer in 1994. She explores various territories ranging from the business world to the streets of the suburbs. She works for the press (Liberation, Le Monde, Paris Match, etc.) and carries out numerous reports abroad on social issues. She won the Kodak Prize in 1999 for reportage on women working at night in Rungis, a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris. Florence Levillain’s work has always focused on rediscovering the universes close to everyone but unknown or forgotten by many. Her new work, “au pied de la lettre,” is an unusual series of photographic works that aims to raise awareness of the lyricism and humor of French language metaphors.

Isabelle Boccon-Gibod (b. France, 1968)

Lives and works in Paris, Isabelle Boccon-Gibod was trained as Engineer in France (Ecole Centrale Paris) and the U.S. (Columbia University, NY). Her life has mixed art and industry throughout her career. Having first worked on collages and installations, she elected photography twenty years ago as her core medium. She attended the Photography School of Brussels, Belgium. Her work is project-based, photography offering the means to explore specific territories. She likes to employ ad-hoc techniques. Her work is collected by Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Jacques Henri Lartigue (b. France,1894-1986)

Known for dynamic photographs of car races and fashionable ladies, Lartigue made a decisive departure from the stiff formality that characterized early photography to capture joyful, carefree scenes of bourgeois leisure. Born into affluence, he documented the excitement of the final years of the Belle Epoque with a gimlet eye and photographed the wealthy vacationers on the French Riviera from the 1920s through the 1960s. Lartigue’s work was underappreciated until the Museum of Modern Art exhibited his photographs in 1963.

Patrice Bodenand (b. France,1958)

Born in France in 1958, Patrice Bodenand made his career in the textile industry, which gave him the opportunity to travel and the desire to discover other countries and cultures. He immigrated to Hong Kong in 2000, then to Mauritius Island and to China, in Qingdao, to return and finish his career in Hong Kong. “What is exciting in photography is to capture a precise moment to fix it in time, even without chronology, but just for memory, individual or shared.”

Philippe Pastor (b. Monaco, 1961)

Philippe Pastor was born in Monaco. He works between Monaco and Spain. Committed to the environment, Philippe Pastor has developed a personalized vision of nature through his work, translating Man’s interaction with the planet. Since 1990 his work has been recognized at Venice Biennale and has been shown around the world. He is the official artist of the Monaco Pavilion at the Universal Exposition EXPO Milano 2015.

Raymond Cauchetier (b. France, 1920-2021)

Raymond Cauchetier was the most famous photographer of the French New Wave. His first photographs were taken in his thirties while serving in the French Air Force press corps in Indochina. Cauchetier traveled through Hong Kong in 1954 and stayed for one week. He left a bouquet of memories, a little yellowed but always authentic. 

Sabine Weiss (b. Switzerland, 1924-2021)

Sabine Weiss decided to become a photographer when she was eighteen, during a time when being a photographer was not a common profession, especially for a woman. Sabine Weiss apprenticed under photographers Frédéric Boissonnas and Willy Maywald, and Vogue hired her as a photo reporter and fashion photographer in 1952. Robert Doisneau discovered her photography and asked her to join the humanist-leaning photo agency Rapho, allowing her to work and travel for many other publications such as Time, Life, Newsweek, and Paris-Match.

Thierry Cohen (b. France, 1963)

Thierry Cohen has been a professional photographer since 1985 and a pioneer in the use of digital techniques. He lives and works between Paris and Monségur, close to the Atlantic Coast. Since 2006, he has devoted most of his time to personal work. Thierry is interested in the impact of human activities, particularly on nature. His works are held in private and public collections and regularly exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris.

Willy Ronis (b. France, 1910-2009)

After selling his first photograph to the newspaper L’Humanité in 1935, Willy Ronis worked as a press photographer. Ronis always linked his personal experience to his work, which also developed and grew through contact with friends and family: portraits of Marie-Anne, his wife (including the famous Le Nu provençal), his son Vincent, his cats, his friends (Robert Capa) and personalities he met (Sartre, Brassaï, etc.) express the same poetics of the universal as the rest of his work.