Museum of Modern Art of Luxembourg, 2006
From the very beginning, the Museum of Modern Art of Luxembourg wanted a photographer to be present at the museum’s construction site conceived by I.M. Pei. This carte blanche granted to Pierre-Olivier Deschamps, was not thought of with the sole purpose of promotion or celebration, but the MUDAM wished that a point of view be expressed, that the photographer has the time to develop, to build himself, to articulate himself.
Pierre-Olivier Deschamps, by choosing to work in the camera, by deciding to mix color and black and white, made rigorous choices. The same ones that led him to give himself the constraint of the vertical image, to choose an approach as precise as it is calm and a silent tonality that comes, at times, to raise some stridencies of the hues. This allowed him to ask the question of the meaning of frontality, to search for angles that will allow him to account for the work of light in the volumes, to attach himself to a staircase developing like a sculpture or to the way a glass roof remodels space.
Since, very clearly, it is no longer a question of describing a construction site or a building – although the documentary and informative dimension remains present – it will be a question of transcribing the words of an architect who is an artist at the service of other artists who will settle in what he has built.
– Christian Caujolle
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