Formes de vie

Le livre

On the occasion of its 30th anniversary the Museum hosts, for her first exhibition in Saint-Etienne, the artist photographer, Valérie Jouve, a native of the region. Born in Firminy in 1964, Valérie Jouve is exhibiting for the first time in her native region. Throughout the development of her work she has regularly returned to the Saint-Etienne region to discover, reveal and detect the evolution of our society: the so-called disappearance of class, the new white-collar elites, the denial of realities (such as the pastel colouring of urban facades in Saint-Etienne during the 1980's, for example). The images of Valérie Jouve, brought together in the exhibition, go beyond any description of reality. While she uses an essentially aesthetic documentary approach, it is always a question for her of restoring the capacity of the image to enrich our imagination, its aptitude to set it in motion, rather than simply the opportunity to see, to read or recognize the subject of the photograph. The exhibition, 'Formes de vies' will certainly refer to the past, with previously unpublished images, taken in Saint-Etienne, but will also prefigure her future work with more contemporary photographs taken in recent years. A montage conceived as an intimate conversation with her region. Her images have no identified origin nor specified places - another characteristic of her approach - and will question our time, our human societies, and our living beings. And, for the first time, certain more autobiographical images will come to divulge fleeting moments in her artistic progression. A prospective dimension will also be present with more recent images, signifying new orientations in her work.