Black-and-white photography’s ‘enduring power’ shown in Hong Kong exhibition at M+, its first show dedicated to the medium
- ‘Noir & Blanc – A Story of Photography’ at M+ is a collaboration with the French National Library that brings together 280 photos taken from 1915 to 2019
- Featuring works from Man Ray, Diane Arbus, Asian pioneer Fan Ho and more, the show highlights black-and-white photography’s ‘sense of intemporality’ and history
For the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France, or BnF), acquiring a now-coveted print of Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, United States – the uncanny 1966 photograph by American photographer Diane Arbus of two young sisters, whose individuality shines through despite their severe uniforms – was actually the result of a missed opportunity.
The year was 1969, and French curator Jean-Claude Lemagny was just settling into his role as the first person appointed to oversee the library’s contemporary photography collection.
“French National Library is a very old depository of photographs – we have photographs [from] 1851,” says Flora Triebel, curator of 19th-century photographs at BnF. “In a way, the story of our collection is totally linked with the story of photography. We developed our collection [as] photography was developing.”
But during the 19th century and first half of the 20th, the library’s collection of photographic works was essentially a French one, Triebel says.
Hoping to diversify it and give it more international scope, and recognising the rising prominence of American photographers, Lemagny planned a networking trip to New York, with a meeting with Arbus seemingly in the books.
But for one reason or another, that meeting never materialised, says Triebel. “When he came back to Paris, he found a letter from her saying, ‘I’m so sorry, it was a bad time, and we didn’t manage to meet. Could I sell to French National Library a few of my photographs?’”
