Guillaume Zuili — The American Years
Exhibition from 13 September to 15 November 2025
Artist talk on 11 October at 1 p.m.
Location: Palos Verdes Art Centre
5504 Crestridge Road
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275
“Film Noir has always been my matrix, because cinema is my matrix. Photography came later, but it all started with movies.”
The American Years is French-born photographer Guillaume Zuili’s love poem to his adopted city of Los Angeles and the desert landscape of Joshua Tree. Beginning with the experimental pinhole camera Smoke and Mirrors series in the early 2000s to his mastery of the lith printing process that continues to be his signature, this exhibition chronicles nearly 25 years of the artist honing his craft as both a black and white film photographer and master printer.
The distinctive point of view from which Zuili sees Los Angeles stems from his childhood love of cinema. Profoundly influenced by the genre of Film Noir, he has always seen photography in black and white. The lith printing process enables him to achieve the high contrast and grainy shadows that make his Urban Jungle images so cinematic. With their warm sepia tones and minimal composition, the Joshua Tree series pays homage to classic American Westerns. The viewer needs only to dive into the pictures to make their own movie.
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