DANIEL BLAU is thrilled to present Foreverglades – a major project by interdisciplinary artist Sofia Valiente. This project brings stories of the Glades and Florida’s pioneer history to new light through a series of contemporary photographs and published in a unique photobook.
 
Originally settled in 1925, the fertile Belle Glade region is a major agricultural center and played an often-overlooked role in the development of South Florida. The geography, folklore and cultural expression of the American frontier are most often associated with the West. With Foreverglades, Valiente draws our attention to a watery, verdant Southern frontier and the pioneer spirit that made an uninhabitable land home. ‘We were never meant to live in Florida’ says Valiente. ‘It was said they were buying land by the gallon!’
 
Valiente’s artistic work is driven and distinguished by lengthy periods of rigorous field research in which she lives within the communities she photographs. She has a remarkable ability to forge relationships across differences, building trust and producing intimate, moving portraits of people and the places they live in. She has resided in the Belle Glade area for five years and Foreverglades has emerged from this period of personal experience and research.
 
Valiente’s vibrant photographs are sensitively interwoven with the pages of a local history book, ‘Swamp to Sugar Bowl: Pioneer Days in Belle Glade’.
This 1968 book by Lawrence E. Will considers the history of the region from the late 19th century to the 1960s. By embedding her pictures within this existing text the artist posits history as an unfolding story and highlights enduring cultural traditions – such as the Harvest Queen beauty pageant that started in the 1940s and continues to this day.
 
The talents and interests that informed Foreverglades were already notable in 2014, when Valiente became one of the winners of our 5 Under 30 competition for young photographers with her project Miracle Village. Miracle Village saw the artist living among registered sex offenders in a rural Florida community, getting to know them and producing a body of photographs and a publication that incorporates handwritten testimonies from the residents.
 
We were honored to exhibit Miracle Village in 2014, and 2015 and she went on to receive the World Press Photo award for this project in 2015, among other prizes and fellowships. Foreverglades was awarded a prestigious Knight Arts Challenge Grant of $75,000 to support its production.
The conceptually and aesthetically rich Foreverglades book will inspire reflection beyond their specific South Florida context. This is an important artwork by an artist whose open mindedness and anthropological approach to artmarking are deeply impressive.
 
Carrie Foulkes, 2020
 

Purchase 'Foreverglades'

 

3 under 30

Daniel Blau is pleased to announce the winners of 3 Under 30, the gallery’s competition for young photographers.

• Jimmy Chin Kiu Lee
• Sarah Louise Lordan
• Manon Martsch

The gallery received numerous submissions from emerging artists around the world. The winning photographers were selected based on the strengths of their portfolio and accompanying statement.

We will present a selection of works by these talented photographers at a group exhibition in Paris during Photo Saint Germain November 2021.

We wish to congratulate these photographers and we look forward to working with them on the Paris project.
 
 

3 under 30

Daniel Blau is pleased to show the three winners of 3 Under 30, the gallery’s competition for young photographers, at Galerie Meyer in Paris.

Galerie Meyer
17, rue des Beaux Arts
75006 Paris

VIP Opening:
Thursday, January 7, 2021
11 am – 7pm
 
Public Exhibition:
January 7 – 23, 2021 !! extended until January 30th, 2021 !!
 
Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Friday
2.30 pm – 6 pm
 
Saturday
11 am – 1 pm,
2.30 pm – 7 pm
 
 
Please Respect the Health Precautions and Social Distancing
Galerie Meyer reserves the right to limit the occupancy in accordance with Government Health Regulations
 
 

3 under 30

Daniel Blau is pleased to announce the three winners of 3 Under 30, the gallery’s competition for young photographers.

• Joseph Glover
• Maite de Orbe
• Lucile Soussan

 
The gallery received numerous submissions from emerging artists around the world. The winning photographers were selected based on the strengths of their portfolio and accompanying statement.

We will present a selection of works by these talented photographers at a group exhibition in Paris during Photo Saint Germain January 2021.

We wish to congratulate these photographers and we look forward to working with them on the Paris project.
 
 
 

Joseph Glover (*1993) graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art BA (Hons) Photography course and will begin an MA in photography at Massachusetts College of Art and Design this year.
 
He uses analogue and digital techniques in works that explore themes of the self, place, society, time and philosophy. Joseph’s project ‘Palm, 269’ is a series of pictures of a neighbouring palm tree.
His documenting of a particular place over time is made powerful by repetition, bringing to mind An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Georges Perec.
 
Joseph Glover – Website
 

Maite de Orbe (*1997) works with photography, etching, video and writing to create multilayered compositions.
 
Her work ‘I took this polaroid of an angel once’ consists of hand printed silver gelatin photographs of the human form. She skillfully captures the gestures of shadow and light on skin in compositions that present beautiful fragments of bodies – fanned fingers, clenched toes, a chest, an arm, a back.
Maite graduated with BA (Hons) Photography at UAL and her work has been exhibited in London, York and Madrid.
 
Maite de Orbe – Website
 

Lucile Soussan (*1990) is currently a student at the École des beaux-arts de Paris in Éric Poitevin’s atelier.
 
She describes herself as a ‘hunter-gatherer of images’. Her practice combines photography and printmaking and is strongly influenced by Japanese contemporary photographers.
Lucile’s project ‘L’Oeuf du Monde’ comprises nine hand printed photo etchings. These evocative images were gleaned from a coastal forest in Japan, where the fleshy bristling body of a sea urchin – ‘the egg of the world’ – was spotted in a nest of stone.
 
Lucile Soussan – Instagram
 

ÉMILE ZOLA  –  L’ EXIL
Weybridge 1898

An exclusive exhibition of previously unseen vintage prints from 1898

Daniel Blau is pleased to present an exhibition of 19 photographs taken by Émile Zola during his period of exile in England, coming from his family and all inscribed by the master himself on verso.

Rather than thinking of Zola as a novelist who took pictures, we may instead come to view him as an artist who both wrote and made photographs. As a result of Zola’s courageous intervention in the Dreyfus Affair he spent almost a year in hiding in England. During these months in 1898‑1899 he took copious photographs in the Surrey countryside that was to be his home for much of this time. His friend (and bodyguard throughout the affair) Fernand Desmoulin having brought him one of his cameras. The photographs from Surrey depict country lanes, ladies on bicycles and the Crystal Palace, in some cases in panorama format. In Zola’s photography we see an abiding interest in architecture, machinery, the modern. In the portraits of friends and family, photographs of street scenes and still lives we see the work of a skilled technician with a profoundly visual sense of the world. It was no easy feat to capture photographs of moving bicycles, with the long exposures of the time, without blurring.

Zola was an accomplished photographer whose pictures of family members, collaborators, landscapes and street scenes evidence the same attention to detail as his naturalistic writings. Amateur photographers proliferated at the turn of the century and there is no shortage of snapshots from this era. However, Zola’s pictures of the rural England are made significant by their context. These pictures coming from the great-grandson archive are on view to the public for the first time.

Galerie Meyer
17, rue des Beaux Arts
75006 Paris

Vernissage Photo Saint Germain:
November 5, 2019
4 pm – 9 pm
Public Exhibition:
November 6 – 23, 2019

Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Friday
2.30 pm – 6 pm

Saturday
11 am – 1 pm,
2.30 pm – 7 pm

Half a century since Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on the Moon, the NASA photographs from the Apollo XI mission remain as awe-inspiring as when they were first seen.

Apollo XI was the first manned lunar landing. The photographs of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon are some of the defining images of the 20th century post-WWII, a time of rapid technology innovation and social change.

 

See here our recent publication “Apollo”