Photo | brut collection Bruno Decharme & compagnie

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Photo | Brut & Compagnie, presented at the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles in 2019.

Curators for the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles: Bruno Decharme, Barbara Safarova, Sam Stourdzé

Curators for the exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, New York: Bruno Decharme, Valérie Rousseau

Published by abcd, AFAM & Flammarion

Can “Brut Photography” be considered a category of Art Brut, according to the definition of the concept proposed by Jean Dubuffet? It would then encompass photographs, prints, photomontages and photocollages created by self-taught authors outside conventional artistic circuits, whether within psychiatric institutions or in the solitude and marginality of urban and rural environments. This exhibition seeks to identify and present to the public this little-studied field of artistic production, despite the existence of a rich and fascinating body of work.

Photo | Brut presents more than five hundred works from the Bruno Decharme Collection, together with a selection from other institutional and private collections chosen for their complementarity. The exhibition features fifty-three artists whose work demonstrates the connections between Art Brut and photography. Some are well known; others, until now largely overlooked, constitute genuine discoveries. These creators of a singular kind reveal the extraordinary inventiveness of their productions, challenging the categories and classifications traditionally adopted by art history. This international exhibition—the first devoted to the subject—and the accompanying publication testify to a field that remains largely unexplored within Art Brut studies. They open the way to innovative photographic practices and contribute to a renewed understanding of the medium.

322 pages
French and English editions
Format: 28 × 24 cm
600 reproductions
Interview with collector Bruno Decharme by Paula Aisemberg
A text by Sam Stourdzé
A text by Michel Thévoz
One essay for each of four themes:

Private Affairs — Brian Wallis
Reformatting the World — Camille Paulhan
“Performing,” or Another Self — Valérie Rousseau
Conjuring Reality: Spirits, Mediums and Threatening Fluids — Barbara Safarova

With biographical contributions by Philipp March Jones, Lucienne Peiry and Richard Max Tremblay.