Dodeigne, the photographer:a donation to La Piscine
Exhibition from 12 October 2024 to 12 January 2025
Photography was always part of Dodeigne’s life. He practised it regularly from his apprenticeship years and his time at the Fine Arts school from 1946 until the end of his career. With more than 2,000 photographs, some of which are assembled in “Chant de Pierres” (song of stones), a work designed with the help of his daughter Claire in 1981, the artist’s photographic work is striking because of its manifest poverty. Exacting in his choice of camera – a Rolleiflex for shots requiring great attention to detail – Dodeigne, in his work as a photographer, would never tire of staging his sculptures, capturing how they interacted with the surrounding space, immortalising them over the course of the seasons and the changes in light. Whether it is the masterful stones emerging from the morning mist, limestone figures thrusting their rugged silhouettes into a winter landscape of bare trees, a group of statues absorbed in a silent dialogue at the fringe of a wood, these are just some of the many enigmatic images which shed plenty of light on the way in which the sculptor considered his work.
Caption: Eugène Dodeigne (1923-2015), Group of three at the Pot de Fer (currently located in Lille, Place de la République). Photograph by Eugène Dodeigne (1923-2015), print by André Florin (1928-2016), 30.3 x 23.9 cm. Roubaix, La Piscine – André Diligent museum of art and industry. Donation from the Dodeigne family in 2024. © ADAGP, Paris, 2024.
Preview on Friday 11 October 2024 from 6pm.
