On The Town

Né en 1988 à Sulina, petite ville portuaire à l’embouchure du Danube, Alexandru Tomazatos est titulaire d’un doctorat en biologie, obtenu en Scandinavie. Un temps tenté par le photojournalisme, il travaille aujourd’hui pour l’Institut Bernhard Nocht pour la médecine tropicale, à Hambourg, et partage son temps entre l’Allemagne et le delta du Danube, entre travail de laboratoire et prélèvements sur le terrain, dans le cadre d’un projet de surveillance d’un virus. Mais il n’a pas pour autant renoncé à la photographie. Quelques travaux en Norvège, à Bucarest et en Turquie exceptés, c’est le delta du Danube qui captive depuis huit ans son œil de photographe. La série Homeland (“pays natal”), dont sont extraites les photos que nous vous proposons ici, est toujours en cours.

Elisabeth  Vigée-Lebrun, Varvara Ivanovna Narishkine, born Ladomirsky (1800)

Vigée Le Brun used self-portraits to assert her status, circulate her image and show people the mother she had become despite the constraints of a career. In this respect, she made her greatest coup de force at the 1787 Exhibition where she presented two paintings that cannot be dissociated. First, a portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette posing for a portrait surrounded by her children in an attempt to rectify the image of an extravagant libertine; secondly, the portrait of a female artist hugging her daughter Julie to her chest in an effusive Raphael-like manner. The latter is one of the finest and most popular of the many works by this painter owned by the Louvre and has remained the emblem of «maternal tenderness» since it was first exhibited to the public. The culture of the Enlightenment and the influence of Rousseau obliged the artist to take on this role, which she did happily and with resounding success. As a counterpoint, she painted the Portrait of Hubert Robert. These paintings are absolute icons illustrating the joy of life and creative genius, complementing and communicating with each other.