SELECTED WORKS
NOUVELLE VAGUE - New Wave
Nouvelle Vague is a tribute to the FRENCH NEW WAVE, an art film movement from the late 1950s. New Wave filmmakers rejected traditional filmmaking to explore narrative and existential themes in a documentary style.
La Galerie Paris 1839 has selected artworks for a retrospective of Chantal Stoman's series:
- Nouvelle Vague
- Visiting Paris
- Tokyo Trip
- Copacabana
- New Orleans
- Suntory
We found correspondences in these series and it was interesting to confront images shot in very different places, moments, atmospheres, which seem to be just different chapters of the same book, revealing the strong style of the artist.
Chantal Stoman will use a shoe, a bag, a pair of glasses, a hat. The accessory will set a situation. It is not fashion anymore, it is a key to enter the story of the characters, to create interactions. Stoman's images are very cinematographic, there is a before and an after. Fashion accessories hide and reveal the owner, but the dramatic construction of Stoman's image - structured and set up with a strong determination - annihilates the "fashion effect" of the object to enhance the relationship between the character and the environment, the character and the other people. There is no secondary role, each character in the picture has a personality. The centrifuge effect of the main character serves the others.
By exploring these relationships, Chantal Stoman also reveals the relationship between the character and the reflected image of him/herself - in the eyes of others as well as in his/her way of showing him/herself.
Stoman's narrative approach tells stories for us to complete. Her work "explores narrative and existential themes in a documentary style," as one might say of the Nouvelle Vague-New Wave films.
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Chantal Stoman is a French photographer and filmmaker based in Paris.
She spent her early years as a fashion photographer. In 2005, after a decade of collaborating with the fashion industry, she began a new chapter with art photography projects.
Her recent work seems far removed from fashion, but it retains traces of the skills she honed in her early years, a special vision.
"My life as a photographer began with fashion. I never completely left it, even when I went far from it.
My photographs are an in-depth observation of the relationship between people, intimacy, and places, what they reveal about their own culture.
I use fashion as a pretext for watching the other one.
The picture I take with a bag or a pair of shoes would be the same without them. My goal is that the accessory is not the centre of the image, but just another element in the visual storytelling.”
Chantal Stoman gives us a spectacular fusion between her seductive expertise as a fashion photographer and the true depth of her artistic narrative. Her photographs are like short films. They explore the elusive beauty that makes a film scene or a moment in life vibrate.
She combines her skills to create a very personal and accomplished work of art.
Chantal Stoman's recent projects have explored cities and memory. She has focused on various big cities: the urban environment is not a backdrop but a central element in her projects. A place where past and present are linked. In her earlier black and white works from all over the world - which will be presented in the forthcoming exhibition NOUVELLE VAGUE - we can already see the themes she would develop later on: the relationship between people, heritage and the present.
Chantal Stoman artworks are collected by public & private collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France - Maison Européenne de la Photographie - Hadassa Institute of Photography, Jerusalem - Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome - National Film Archive of Japan - Sala 1, Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome - Fondation Antoine de Galbert - Collection Marin Karmitz - Chanel Patrimoine - Collection Wertheimer, New York - Collection Friedman, La Nouvelle Orléans - Enchères Arturial - Groupe Hélios - Galerie Jansem, Paris
Her work has been awarded international Prizes
2021 Best Feature Documentary, ARFF Amsterdam pour Ōmecittà
2018 CNC Prix du Projet à l'édition pour Ōmecittà
2017 Soutien à la photographie documentaire contemporaine, CNAP, France 2012 Premio dos Caminos de Hierro, Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles, Palacio Fernán Núñez, Madrid
2008 III Premio Internacional de Fotografía Contemporánea Pilar Citoler, Edita Fundacion Provincial de Artes Plásticas Rafael Boti, Universidad de Córdoba.
Chantal Stoman has been exhibiting continuously since 2005.
She has been invited worldwide : Barcelona, Tokyo, Paris, New York, Brussels, Mumbai, Rome, Phnom Penh, Netherlands, Siem Reap, Jerusalem, Marseille, Los Angeles, Kamakura, etc. including the last 3 years:
2024 Ōmecittà, Kawakita Film Museum, Kamakura, Japan
2024 The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Black & White - A Story of Photography, in collaboration with the French National Library and M+, M+ Museum, Hong Kong (group exhibition)
2023 Une Histoire d’images : Donation Antoine de Galbert, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble, France (group exhibition)
2023 Noir & Blanc : une esthétique de la photographie, French National Library (BNF), Paris (group exhibition)
Corps à Corps : Histoire(s) de la photographie, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (group exhibition)
Épreuves de la matière, French National Library (BNF), Paris, France (group exhibition)
Ōmecittà, Japan Foundation, Los Angeles
2022 Le Grand numéro de Chanel, Grand Palais Ephémère, Paris (group exhibition)
