It’s a cold wintry November afternoon in the River Café at Tate Modern. The tourists are all huddled inside hiding from the rain and here I am eager to grill Damarice over her work on Dora Maar – on tour from the Centre Pompidou, Paris - and her previous exhibitions Eli Lotar, and Photographie, arme de classe [Photography as a weapon in the class struggle]. This is the first time we are meeting and it's the first of my research interviews for my thesis.

 

The next hour is spent enigmatically mulling over photography, exhibitions and what it means to be a woman of colour in these spheres. If anything, Damarice is deeply honest and thorough about it all. There's no pretence around her views or the politics involved and it's certainly undeniable how knowledgable she is.

​

C.L: Can you tell me a bit about what the French photography scene is like compared to the British? Or perhaps more specifically, what are the things you think are different between the way the British museums and the French museums view photography? 

 

D.A.: I don’t really know the British scene but what I know is that the Tate Modern department is quite new. It was only in 2007 when someone arrived so we, from a foreign point of view, saw that photography was quite important in Britain. Great Britain was like the second country for photography and always had this challenge. And in Britain photography developed as an art maybe earlier than France. In the 19th Century, they had the great amateur, Julia Margaret Cameron. There was more recognition for women photographers earlier than in France. History of photography in Great Britain is perhaps more progressive in a way and those people were collected by people quite early in institutions. If I remember correctly the Lady Edwardian Archives arrived at the V&A in 1939 so it’s quite interesting but at the same time, it’s quite amazing that it was only 2007 that Tate has taken up a curator of photography. At the same time there are people like Elizabeth Edwards and Chris Martin working on photography but in the academic field. They were doing it for a long time ago, you know. It seems like photography has had a kind of reverse. Like finally it was installed in Great Britain as an art, quite quickly but at the same time, it was mainly the people from universities, anthropology, ethnographic museums that looked into it.

 

C.L: Do you think it’s maybe the market then? Because now the market has been more accepting of photography and perhaps that’s why we suddenly see so many photography blockbusters here.

 

D.A.: Yes, I also think that. You need more new stuff to sell. The work that Tate does is really good but they need to catch up in terms of the collection. They came, Yasifumi and Emma with their patrons and collectors to our (Centre Pompidou) collection. We often have people in photography make special visits to maintain work relations. [With Yasifumi and Emma] We showed them our masterpieces, and they were really amazed by the quality of the stuff you can’t find on the market now. It’s not easy to try and build a collection of Modern prints now.

 

For us also, Photo London is not anywhere near what it should be. In the beginning, people were going like once or twice and say there’s no point. It’s on the commercial side.

 

C.L: I also found that in France, there are a lot more photo festivals. You’ve got Arles, which is monumental and then Visa in Perpignan. 

 

D.A: Yes, every city in France has its own photo festival. There indeed is a lot of smaller producers. So, we have people that will go to your shows and buy the catalogue as they are big fans of photography. It’s maybe different…

 

We are aware that the institutional dynamic is quite different but it’s not a question of who is ahead but a question of how it has developed. The strength is on the academic field and scientific museums and looking at photography in a very different way. Photography as a modern art is quite a recent dynamic. But to do a collection, they need a lot of money because a lot of the photographs’ prices have risen and there are a lot of things that are already bought. So, they can easily buy contemporary works but for the Modern stuff, with all the commercial galleries, they have to consider what’s a good price?

 

C.L: I also thought perhaps the difference in attitudes towards photography is because it is a lot more philosophical. There’s a lot to unpack in the medium and in my experiences, that kind of questioning is quite ingrained in French culture and art. 

 

D.A.: It’s true. We had a discussion on the last day of Paris Photo, a panel about the last book of Michel Probert 50 years of the French scene, this aspect that we have a lot of commentators, philosophers, writers etc. It’s true that with photography it demands in many ways, from visual culture, artistic, but it’s true that the intellectuals in France embrace photography. So you go to Bourdieu to Foucault to Barthes, everybody discussed it. At the same time, I work in a museum where my director is not that into photography. There are different movements and tensions in the art world in France. There are the old-fashioned people that think art is painting and sculpture and they still think that. At the same time, we are the country with Bourdieu who says photography is something that is interesting, as a tool to understand the changing of society. We’ve welcomed Benjamin in the 30s, Gisèle Freund did her thesis here and at the same time, we have people who say photography is not art. But it’s true that photography has helped to raise problems, been a solution to some and can be photography and images. It’s in our intellectual culture to have a biography of essays.

 

C.L: Do you find with this tension that there is a need to navigate it within your exhibitions and the way you curate for your audiences?

 

D.A: I think in the museum, maybe it’s the same as here, there are different spaces to do different things. So, for an exhibition like Photographie, arme de classe, I don’t think I could have proposed this in the same space as the Dora Maar on the sixth floor at the Centre Pompidou. Because what is a museum now? It’s a curatorial team but also media and communications and so on.

 

C.L: So, with the Dora Maar and the monographic shows?

 

D.A: Yes, they are all the same. Monographic is less complex, easy to sell. Even just to convince every department for the show, because everything is based on tickets now. They want names.

 

But I think the level of how you can deal with the tension depends on the stage of where you play. When I’m at the photo gallery, there is no pressure. We can do what we want, it’s a free space. It costs but not too much. We spend like a maximum of 50,000 euros in production for everything. So I can do something for the audience, but at the same time, for Photographie, arme de classe, something more historical. In a way, we tried to read the collection again with this political perspective.

 

Actually, in the beginning, the press and communication said the political subject, left-ist, was too French and too much. But by the end, we had a lot of press and even television coverage. I managed to even do an interview with a major media outlet. You can reach audiences even with something as thematical and precise a subject. It was interesting as the exhibition was also at the moment of the Gilets Jaune. People could relate a lot so that’s how we managed to become noticed. The press began to say “Ok! Yes!” And there was also the commemoration of the First World War. We had a part of the exhibition on the fare of the war. When you do a good show, I think you raise actual problems. Even if it is historical. I should confess that I do try to …For this project, we worked with like a group of researchers so I was co-ordinating the research for the museum and what they wanted. But I had to explain that we need things to go on the wall. It should be nice, powerful and interesting. That we are in a museum of art and not manuscript.

 

The work of curating is also trying to seduce people and you have to be aware of your audiences. It means I don’t compromise with some kind of documents like if it criticises or it's pornographic. I don’t care. I will always find the ones that are powerful images to put on the wall. Going to an exhibition is an experience. It’s quite ephemeral. So people have to really capture it in one or two images. So sometimes I have to try and understand that we are not in a library with some documents in a vitrine. I’m in a museum.

 

You’ve seen the Nam June Paik? Like that, we have to try to find some nice framing for the documents. 

This is our work because we need to attend to the audience even if we do have a difficult topic or if it’s a blockbuster show. I think it’s our job to do nice exhibitions and always be aware of the visual impact.

 

C.L: If you do concentrate a lot on visual impact, then how does linearity and biography play into your curatorial choices?

 

D.A.: The question of biography…I think it depends on the subject. It is about how you tell the story then the exhibition is not the place for chronology. You can get that from a book. You have to choose the right episode in the biography that explains something. For me, the biography is something you can include if it’s relevant. In Dora Maar, and for women artists, it’s really important to be careful about this. When you have a woman, it’s something. People are more interested in things like their lovers, their children, if she took care of her parents. They think they have the right to ask those questions. But it’s really quite different for male artists.

 

It’s something we tried to avoid on purpose with Dora Maar. Except for Picasso as that was in contact with another artist and it has changed something. But all the list of her lovers that she took wasn’t relevant. And a lot of the time it can just be rumours. People write a lot in diaries, of who slept in what positions and with who. You don’t really know when if it's true. So my thing is ‘Can you put it on the wall?’ If it’s not visually impactful I’m not going to write that on the wall. If she didn’t express something in her heart about this, why should I talk about it? It’s just gossip.

  

But sometimes you do need chronology for artists who had a life that changed due to events that happened to them. Like the shift, what being clandestine would have had an impact there, the way they drew or painted, if they were in exile. In these cases, you have to speak about this. Like the Hungarian photographers who were in exile. They came here and didn’t speak French. What could they do? Take photographs.

 

If it’s explaining like this in more social and historical terms, then okay. But it depends from case to case.

 

Usually, in my practice, and the way I work, I do not need to read the biography. I like to read autobiographies even though it’s constrictive. I like to see how they think about themselves. It can be quite funny. But it must be said as a construction, not as something you have to stick to.

 

I just need to know the date and to see if it’s relevant or right.

 

C.L: What about linearity [in space] then? The single line hang, one eye-level etc

 

D.A.: It depends on the story you want to tell. I never do an exhibition without a story I want to tell. When we start to construct, I need a narrative first. So it can be linear…but mainly the story. I can start maybe in 1920, but the next chapter could be 1940, and then 1930 later. I need a relation between each chapter first. Sometimes it is easier to do it linearly because it makes sense. But other times, it could be that you want to focus on the different techniques. It depends on the problematics you want to raise.

 

If it’s a retrospective, sometimes its easier to do just do it in a linear fashion.

 

C.L: Do you look a lot at how visitors move around in the space? Or is it mainly the narrative then?

 

D.A: I’m quite a corporealist, for me, it’s the same. It’s on different levels though. First, when we draw the exhibition, it’s just the narrative. Then when we are thinking more about the scenography we try to look at how people go this or that way and what I want people to see. At different moments, we organise it more precisely on the narrative.

 

C.L: Have you ever done it in reverse? Where you see how you move around first and then build the narrative around it?

 

D.A.: No never. For me, an exhibition is just … you can do a book, documentary, dance, speeches, it’s all the same. The exhibition is a tool for me to tell something about the artist. At the beginning there will always be something you want to say, a story you want to tell about the artist and then the rest. But some people are quite different. They think more visually with this painting and then that one. But for me, it is always the narrative first as I’m more of a historian. And because I love writing and history. For me, it’s a way to think.

 

I’m aware that it’s subjective, that history is. This story of Dora Maar is totally subjective, but you have to be clear and rational in its subjectivity. I find it’s quite important to remember this.

 

C.L: Do you think that this subjectivity it helps to add to the canon then. I read your chapter on Eli Lotar and his collection was really about new discourses on post-war photography and himself as an artist. Do you think most monographic shows have that in mind too? 

 

D.A: Yes, we should confess and admit that. Doing monographic shows is boring and always enforcing this discourse of ‘masters’. Even if it’s not an ‘Old Master’ it’s that we have discovered a ‘New Master’.

 

But what I did with Lotar and Maar is to say that some people were artists all their lives. But it was not perfect, and they didn’t have success. But the fact that they didn’t have success does not mean you can’t show their work. For Dora Maar, like the last bit in the exhibition, she kept it in her studio. She never showed it. But she was an artist her whole life.

 

In photography, it’s easier for this. But I’m aware Dora Maar's exhibition was at a great level in Paris. We didn’t do it to put her into the canon because it’s not the way we envisioned the history of art but she has the right to be in that history. Even the failures who didn’t have success says a lot about what you can do in the system. Same for Lotar. Years of photography but only in the last ten to fifteen years. He failed to be a great director of photography in his career. But it says something. If we hope that in decades someone will remember us in at least one image - I’m not sure for me - but you know one or two images, that’s still something.

 

And for historical photographers, at the time, they were in a network and perhaps seen as not important. But they were in the middle of something. We have to remind ourselves of this, that there was something and it should be seen as important. And it wasn’t because it didn’t last for fifty years that we should forget about it. Of course, there are the Picassos, Dalis and Cartier-Bressons. But there were some people who were remarkably good for five years and we should speak about what they managed to do in this time, what they failed to do and why. 

 

That's why I think it is possibly true that monographic exhibitions reinforce the way of telling the history of art. But maybe it's also a way to manage and convince the stakeholders, that "okay this person is not that famous, but it will work. Trust us." It takes more and more time. We shouldn’t focus on research and so on. But it’s true that when you’re in a big institution, you know you have to fight with the directors of the communication, the production departments etc. It’s part of our work to say no, I want to do a show on this woman or these people. Like "It’s not like a blockbuster, but we did Rene Magritte last year so maybe we have the space to do something else. If we work well on the visual and storytelling, maybe we could do something that people will be interested in."

 

But when you go into an institution, you go for a compromise and fight. Try to change things. I’m not divisional. Life is… we say in French ‘vallée de larmes’ – weeping valley. You know there’s never a moment where it’s peaceful, there’s always something. Life and professional life. It’s always going and fighting.