African portraits

•Written by William T. Dowell• ••Monday•, 20 •September• 2010 05:33•

Everyone photographs Africa these days, but the exhibition by Geneva-based fine arts photographer Cyril Kobler which is showing at the Pinacothèque at 28 rue Montbrilliant, through September 26, adds an ingenious touch to the standard approach.

Both Irving Penn and Richard Avedon transported a studio backdrop—usually a giant roll of white paper—to isolate indigenous subjects from their native habitat. The shock of seeing a tribal chieftain or fierce warrior in full regalia, isolated against a plain white background, both intensified the difference in cultures and at the same time made it more accessible. Cyril Kobler, who toured West Africa for four months in the middle 1980s in a search to resource himself, took a different approach. Kobler took along a portable aluminum stand which supported a white sheet as a makeshift backdrop. It looked like the old fashioned Penn-Avedon approach. And the people that Kobler got to stand in front of the sheet thought they were the subject of the photo.

In fact, Kobler had a much wider focus, and the photos showed not only the person who expected to be the principal subject, but also took in everyone else who was watching.

In some cases, the trick produces a surprising effect. Kobler photographs an African policeman posing in front of the sheet. You can see all the pride in his eyes, complemented by a freshly starched uniform. But the camera not only captures the policeman, it also shows the bars of a cell, with a dispirited prisoner, that is to the side. Another photo shows an African subject posing stiffly in front of the same sheet, but on either side of him, we see dozens of bystanders watching the man, who they mistakenly believe is supposed to be the center of attention. Still another portrait of a man in front of an African general store expands to show a hunter standing to the side with his equipment.

Kobler considers the photos to have been mostly an interesting experiment. They are included in a book on sale at the Pinacothèque. Kobler's main work these days includes surrealistic images of Shanghai and Gulf cities and imaginative constructed landscapes. Examples are on view at his website, cyril-kobler.com. He also exhibits at the Anton Meier gallery in Geneva, and he has his own gallery, aptly named La Galerie at 17 Rue de la Coulouvrenière, in the rue des Bains gallery district near Plain Palais.

The Pinacothèque, which is showing Kobler’s work this week, is an interesting experiment in bringing art to a greater public that can appreciate the work, but might not be able to afford expensive gallery prices. Each artist showing at the Pinacotheque, donates a work from the exhibition to the Association’s collection. The association then rents works from its collectiono to the public. If you join the association for CHF 40, you can rent one of its works for CHF100 a year. Non-members pay CHF150. It doesn’t take a math genius to figure that joining the association not only makes sense, but saves the renter CHF 10.

The main idea is not just to help artists, but to gradually grow a sensitivity to what art has to offer to a public that might not have previously realized just how accessible it is. Christophe Bollmann, who curated last year’s Art By Genève show at PalExpo, has created an online photo gallery which is accessible from the pinacothèque website and shows how the art has fit into the homes of dozens of Pinacotheque participants.

Cyril Kobler experiments with similar formulas at La Galerie. A show last year involved a number of Cyril’s contacts in the photo world contributing works that sold for CHF 100. Kobler’s best work, of course, is considerably more expensive, but the idea is to uncage art from the sterile predictability that can make even the most hopeful work look more like a mummified relic than an expression of active imagination.

True to form, Cyril Kobler was standing outside the Pinacotheque at the opening of his exhibition last Saturday, photographing passersby in front of a portable backdrop similar to the one he had used in Africa. One of the more amusing photos in the exhibition shows a slightly younger Kobler in front of his own backdrop. An African watches him nervously. He is sitting on a crocodile, who was just pulled twisting and turning from the nearby river. “Was it alive?” I asked. “Yes,” said Cyril. “No one was quite sure what it would do.” The same holds true for both the Pinacotheque and Kobler. To see the photo, you need to catch the exhibition, which ends on Saturday.

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