A CROSS-SECTION OF AMERICA

«CROSSING VIEWS OF AMERICA»
Two photographic perspectives on
an intimate and little-known America

Charles Derenne and Jean-Luc Bertini

Charles Derenne and Jean-Luc Bertini reveal an intimate, lesser-known side of America. Their photographs offer a sensitive portrait of the American landscape, where places, traces of the past and human presence tell another story of America, beyond appearances.

Through the works of Charles Derenne and Jean-Luc Bertini, Perspectives on America offers a sensitive exploration of the United States, moving beyond conventional representations of the American Dream. Two distinctive photographic approaches examine the relationship between people, territory and the memory of places, revealing a more intimate America, shaped by urban landscapes, vast expanses and contemporary solitude.

With Los Angeles: Back Alleys, Charles Derenne unveils the hidden side of the City of Angels. Over the course of two months, the photographer covers more than 600 kilometres on foot, exploring the backstreets and forgotten spaces of a metropolis in constant transformation. Shot entirely on 35 mm film, his series reveals another geography of Los Angeles, far removed from Hollywood imagery. Understated architecture, plays of light and shadow, and fragments of everyday life come together to create a sensitive portrait of a city whose successive transformations threaten to erase its memory. A tribute to the unseen beauty of ordinary places, but also to Los Angeles’ cinematic history.

In Américaines Solitudes, Jean-Luc Bertini explores the place of the individual within the immensity of the American landscape, drawing on ten years of travels across the United States. His carefully structured compositions capture suspended moments in which the human presence sometimes seems to dissolve into the landscape. Moving between documentary observation and contemplation, his images question the paradoxes of a society in which vast spaces and the ways they are inhabited can also give rise to anonymity and solitude. Published by Actes Sud in 2020, with texts by Richard Ford and Gilles Mora, the series was exhibited at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles in 2021. Around ten photographs have also entered the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

While Charles Derenne reveals traces of human presence through the spaces people leave behind, Jean-Luc Bertini explores the fragility of that presence within immense territories. Their perspectives converge in a shared sensitivity to silence, to places, and to what lies beyond the immediate gaze.

Take a look at the event catalogue : Click here