Portrait éphémère du Japon: Pierre-Élie de Pibrac's photography exhibition at the Musée Guimet

Calling all fans of Japanese landscapes and culture! The Musée Guimet in Paris is transporting us to the Land of the Rising Sun with its new exhibition. Entitled " Portrait éphémère du Japon, photographies de Pierre-Élie de Pibrac ", this installation presents the photographic project"Hakanai Sonzai" (" I feel myself an ephemeral creature " in Japanese) by French photographer Pierre-Elie de Pibrac.

Named Emerging European Talent by the Fotomuseum Winterhur in 2019 and winner of the National Portrait Gallery's Taylor Wessing Prize in 2021, Pierre-Elie de Pibrac (b. 1983) has a singular approach to photography, halfway between the tradition of humanist reportage and fine art photography.

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To produce the beautiful"Hakanai Sonzai" series, the photographer travelled to Japan for around 8 months, between December 2019 and August 2020, where he met yakuzas, Fukushima survivors and hikikomori, people who live cut off from the world and other people, usually cloistered in their rooms.

Pierre-Élie de Pibrac criss-crossed the country, from Kyoto to the island of Yakushima, passing through the underbelly of Osaka, the ghost town of Yubari and the sacred forest of Aokigahara, to meet personalities in a state of upheaval, driven by a desire to rebuild their lives. The series reveals 17 large color portraits, each with its own story, such as Kinji San, one of the last former miners of Yubari, or Sanae San, asleep at the foot of Mount Fuji, evoking"The Ballad of Narayama".

In addition to these sublime portraits, bearing witness to the Japan of inner exiles, the exhibition also features several showcases containing other photographs and various objects, such as the"goshuincho", the famous notebook stamped on every visit to sacred places in Japan, and the various books that gave the photographer an idea of Japanese culture before his departure ("Chronique japonaise" by Nicolas Bouvier,"Le Chrysanthème et le sabre" by Ruth Benedict...).

Finally, as a counterpoint to the"Hakanai Sonzai" series, the Musée Guimet unveils a second part, again created by Pierre-Élie de Pibrac, and devoted to still lifes and landscapes in black and white with the look of prints.

Join us at the Musée Guimet from September 20, 2023 to January 15, 2024 to discover the exhibition " Portrait éphémère du Japon, photographies de Pierre-Élie de Pibrac ", a truly immersive investigation, as beautiful as it is fascinating. A series of podcasts accompanies the exhibition.