Lines and Lineage exhibition in Paris, Galerie de LaSCAM

Lines and Lineage exhibition for the winners of the Roger Pic Award, from 11 June to 25 October, 2019

Galerie de LaSCAM
Société civile des auteurs multimédia
5 avenue Vélasquez
75008 Paris
France

About the work

Lines and Lineage takes aim at America’s collective amnesia of history. The work addresses the missing photographic record of the period when Mexico ruled what we now know as the American West. To visualize the people and places from the remarkable yet unseen Mexican era, I chose to photograph the region with glass plates and a 19th-century wooden camera. Portraits of direct descendants of early inhabitants of the West—mestizo, Afro-Latin, indigenous, Crypto-Jewish—are paired with photographs of landscapes inside the original border and architecture from the Mexican period. Lines and Lineage lifts the pervasive fog of dominant Western mythology and makes us question the role that photographs—both present and missing—have played in shaping the identity of the West.

About the exhibition and award

Each year, la Société civile des auteurs multimédia (La SCAM), awards a photographic portfolio documenting reality and questioning our humanity with singularity. The award is in memory of Roger Pic, a French photographer, director and defender of copyright. For the 27th edition of the award, there was a tie, and the jury selected two award winners, Tomas van Houtryve for Lines and Lineage and Denis Dailleux for his series ln Ghana – We shall meet again. An honorable mention was also given to Laetitia Vançon for her portolio, At the end of the day. The members of of the jury were Florence Drouhet, Fabienne Pavia, Thierry Ledoux, Gérard Uféras, Bénédicte Van der Maar and Guy Seligmann.