Anne Rearick — True West

Galerie Clémentine de la Feronnière
51, rue Saint-Louis-en-l’île, 75004, Paris (FRANCE)
From November 16, 2019 to February 22, 2020

“Almost a century ago, my great-grandmother, Maggie May Jones, left Oklahoma for Boise, Idaho with her husband and children in a trailer that contained most of their belongings. Her head full of dreams. Three generations later, I’m born. The memories of summers spent with my grandfather in Idaho are the strongest memories of my childhood. The rodeo and the cowboys, the drive-ins, the tubing down the river, the smell and sound of guns, and the drunken family…

Idaho is similar to many American states: the capital Boise, with its beautiful university and mixed population, is home to only 12% of the population. In the rest of the region, a collection of small rural towns, where in some churches the American flag flies proudly beside the cross…” Here is the background of the personal photographic story of this great American photographer, who works in time, in black and white, in a cinematographic atmosphere.

Anne Rearick was born in the United States in 1960. She follows in the great tradition of humanist documentary photographers such as Dorothea Lange or Diane Arbus. She works in the long run, diving into the daily life of her subjects as far as they allow. The beauty of her images is in harmony with silver black and white, and the wide and square format of the 6 x 6 of her Hasselblad camera allows her to render minute details: the way the skin stands out, the background of a landscape…

These elements form the components of paintings that become impossible to date, imbued with a permanent poetry of universal emotion. From the Basque country to Kazakhstan, Anne Rearick regularly sets down her suitcases to photograph everything that touches her. A member of Agence VU since 1992, she is published in major international magazines and teaches photography and film history in the USA.