Simon Brodbeck & Lucie de Barbuat

Brodbeck & de Barbuat (Simon Brodbeck and Lucie de Barbuat) are a Franco-German artist duo based in Paris. From concept to shooting to printing, this couple of photographers works in perfect symbiosis. Since 2005, they have developed an artistic practice that questions both the history of photography and that of the places they choose as experimental grounds.

In their series Silent World the duo photographs the streets of Paris and Rome, two European metropolises with unparalleled heritage. New York, with its iconic 20th-century architecture, and Hong Kong, with its futuristic atmosphere, complete the series. In the photo edition of Private Choice in November 2024, the Place de la Concorde, with its royal grandeur, faces the Saint Sulpice church and the Roman Pantheon.

The tribute to the history of art continues in the choice of photographic technique. In 1838, the first prints by Louis Daguerre showed empty landscapes, where only a shoe shiner appeared. The extremely long exposure time of the first cameras erased all movement, creating enigmatic and timeless shots. Inspired by the father of photography, Simon Brodbeck and Lucie de Barbuat have transcribed this extended temporality by limiting the amount of light entering the lens. With an exposure time of 4 to 8 hours, followed by editing work, the photographers reinvent a bicentennial technique using contemporary processes.

Here the deserted streets, immortalized in 2009, anticipate the surreal landscapes of the Covid period by a decade of 2020. In these photographs with an almost pictorial composition, past, present and future intertwine. Human activity fades away, giving way to monuments that become the real protagonists.

Residents of the Villa Médicis, French Academy in Rome from 2016 to 2017, they are graduates of the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles and the National Institute of Languages and Oriental Civilizations in Paris.