NYAB Event - Denis Brihat “The Cosmos”

Denis Brihat “The Cosmos”

Nailya Alexander Gallery

This event has ended.

Denis Brihat (b. 1928, Paris) first made his photographs in 1943. In 1948, he attended the Rue de Vaugirard photography school, and in 1955 encouraged by Robert Doisneau, he started working for the RAPHO agency. Brihat spent a year (1955-1956) photographing in India, where he produced work that won him the Prix Niepce in 1956 and an exhibition at the Société Française de Photographie. In 1958, he moved to Provence, where he settled at Bonnieux to concentrate on his personal research and the themes of nature. Living in seclusion on the then deserted Plateau des Claparèdes, he at last could create the photography he had always longed for: images that revealed the complexity and beauty of nature through a completely immersive experience. Several important exhibitions mark this period, notably at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1966 and at MoMA (New York) with Pierre Cordier and Jean-Pierre Sudre in 1967. In 1968, Brihat started his experiments in color by using metal toning and etching process of the gelatin surface, techniques he tirelessly pursued and honed ever since. The color in Brihat’s toned prints is mineral, made of the salts of silver, gold, sodium, iron, and uranium among others, and is achieved solely through classical darkroom processes. The resulting prints are sumptuous and delicate. Of remarkable richness, they expose the color of light, something far greater than the color of things.

“When Brihat enlarges a slice of lemon to the size of a cathedral rose window, when he puts a single acacia seed or spike of lavender on a neutral background – a background of nothingness – he raises these tiny harbingers to the power of the cosmos, and infinity is certainly what he intends to possess, infinity withdrawn from the wear of time, an eternal infinity.” (Michel Tournier)