Guillaume Herbaut — Orages

Centre du Patrimoine Arménien
14 rue Louis Gallet, 26000 Valence (FRANCE)
From October 22, 2021 to March 13, 2022

• • • ORAGE (n.) [o-ra-j’] – Storm 1. violent agitation of the atmosphere with wind, lightning and thunder. With over a hundred photographs and video diaries, the exhibition revisits some of the major themes in Guillaume Herbaut’s career; a committed body of work that takes us into the turmoil of history, to meet the abandoned and the sacrificed. The inhabitants of Chernobyl, the survivors of Nagasaki, the displaced of Fukushima, the photojournalist has endeavoured to make visible the lives of those swept away by disasters, thus fighting against their erasure. In Ukraine, a territory he has explored for nearly twenty years, he observes, from the capital Maïdan to the Donbass region, how a pacifist movement has, over time, turned into an armed conflict. A wild and vibrant chronicle of a vibrant The exhibition will also allow us to discover ‘La Ve’ , his new and unprecedented long-term work, undertaken while the health crisis kept the photographer in France. Observing the upheavals of political and social life, the ills of a fractured society, he questions the symbols and representation of a Republic with an unstable foundation, shaken by popular anger.

Orages, the exhibition of the multi award-winning photographer Guillaume Herbaut, documents the turmoil of contemporary democracies, from the Ukraine, his favourite terrain, to France, the recent focus of his questioning. A striking work that goes beyond the immediacy of events and shows how political, social or environmental crises profoundly transform the societies that experience them.