14 juin 2011

La Hague: Port-Racine /« Des bêtes… » - Jacques Prévert et Ylla

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Un matin clair à Port-Racine: La mer est haute et tout est calme.
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Exposition insolite à la Maison Prévert, à deux pas de Port-Racine: Tous deux amoureux des livres d’images, le poète et la photographe animalière ont publié ensemble Le petit lion (1947) et Des bêtes (1950). Grâce à des photos et des extraits de textes, l’exposition présente leurs regards croisés sur la condition animale. C’est aussi l’occasion de découvrir l’oeuvre d’Ylla, pionnière de la photographie animalière.

Ylla est le pseudonyme de Camilla Koffler. Née en Autriche en 1911, d'un père roumain et d'une mère serbe, elle va à l'école à Budapest, puis rejoint sa mère à Belgrade, où elle étudie la sculpture. Elle émigre à Paris en 1931 et se lance dans la photographie animalère. Elle expose à la Galerie de La Pléiade, et ouvre un studio. Le Musée d'Art Moderne de New-York l'invite aux États-Unis en 1940.

Elle voyage en Afrique en 1952, puis en 1954, aux Indes, où elle est mortellement blessée pendant un festival à Bharatpur.

Ses photos ont été publiées dans de nombreux magazines, et illustrent encore bon nombre de calendriers. Ses archives sont au Center for Creative Photography, à l'Université de l'Arizona.



A bright morning at Port-Racine: It's high tide and everything is quiet.
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An intriguing art exhibit is on display at the Prévert House, just a few steps from Port-Racine: Both fascinated with picture books, the poet and the photographer teamed up to pubish "The small lion" in 1947 and "About animals" in 1950. Mixing photographs and texts, the exhibit presents their common view of the animal kingdom.

It is a chance to discover the work of Ylla, a pioneer photographer of the world's fauna.

Ylla's actual name was Camilla Koffler. She was born in Austria in 1911 to a Romanian father and Serb mother, both Hungarian nationals. At age eight, she was placed in a German boarding school in Budapest, Hungary. In 1925, Koffler joined her mother in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where she studied sculpture. By 1931, she had moved to Paris, where she studied sculpture at the Académie Colarossi and worked as photo retoucher and assistant to photographer Ergy Landau, and she took the name Ylla. In 1932, she began photographing animals, exhibited her work at Galerie de La Pléiade, and opened a studio to photograph pets. In 1940, New York's Museum of Modern Art submitted her name to the U.S. Department of State requesting an entry visa; she immigrated to the United States in 1941.

In 1952, Ylla traveled to Africa, and in 1954 she visited India for the first time. She was fatally injured after falling from a jeep while photographing a bullock cart race during festivities in Bharatpur, North India.

Her photographs have been published in many magazines and are still used in a large number of calendars year after year. Her archives have been collected at the Center for Creative Photography, at the University of Arizona.


For more information about Normandy, visit MyNormandy.com

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