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 and printing, this photographic couple work 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 grounds for experimentation.

In their series Silent World the duo photograph the streets of Paris and Rometwo European metropolises with an unrivalled wealth of heritage. New York, with its iconic 20th-century architecture, and Hong Kong, with its futuristic ambience, complete the series. In the photo edition of Private Choice in November 2024the regal Place de la Concorde faces the church of Saint Sulpice and the Roman Pantheon.

The homage to art history extends to the choice of photographic technique. In 1838, the first prints by Louis Daguerre showed empty landscapes, with only a shoeshine boy visible. The extremely long exposure time of the first cameras erased all movement, creating enigmatic enigmatic, timeless images.. Inspired by the father of photography, Simon Brodbeck and Lucie de Barbuat have transcribed this distended temporality by limiting the amount of light entering the lens. With an exposure time of 4 to 8 hours, followed by editing, the photographers reinvent a two-hundred-year-old technique using contemporary processes.

Here, the deserted streets, immortalized in 2009, a decade ahead of the surreal landscapes of the Covid period period of 2020. In these photographs, with their almost painterly composition past, present and future intermingle. Human activity fades awayHuman activity fades away, giving way to monuments that become the real protagonists.

Residents of the Villa MediciAcadémie de France in Rome from 2016 to 2017, they are graduates of theÉcole nationale supérieure de la Photographie d'Arles and the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris.