Obsession Dietrich

Collaged, spliced, and reassembled images of Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich by French photographers Edouard Taufenbach and Bastien Pourtout, created using vintage photographs from the collection of Pierre PassebonPublished in conjunction with an exhibition at the Galerie du Passage-Pierre Passebon from February 15th - March 15th 2022It was during a chance meeting with the collector Pierre Passebon and French photographers Édouard Taufenbach and Bastien Pourtout that the idea of a commission was born: to tell a story within the story of Passebon's stellar collection of over 500 vintage photographs of Marlène Dietrich. Taufenbach and Pourtout have developed - using their iPhones - a new form of photomontage based on the instantaneous nature of Instagram and the possibility of communicating images remotely. In real time, they mix elements of the photographs; editing, splicing, juxtaposing, and reassembling them. These transformed images of one of the most alluring stars of cinema are a meditation on beauty, fame, and the nature of obsession. With these effects, comparable to the chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey or the stroboscopy used by Harold Edgerton or Gjon Mili, Édouard Taufenbach and Bastien Pourtout follow a photographic tradition while simultaneously renewing it. This modernity... reveals an obsession: that of Marlène preoccupied with control over her image. She knew, all her life, how to hide under the mask of eternal beauty, as shown in the works assembled here. - Jean-Luc Monterosso. Text in English and French.