Abvent Group
French photographer, based in Paris (France)
Born in 1964 in St Jean de Luz, Patrick Taberna was attracted to photography from an early age and began his practice during numerous trips to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States, with Nicolas Bouvier’s “L’usage du monde” in his pocket. When he arrived in Paris in 1987, he assiduously attended the 30×40 club led by Jean Luc Lemaitre and Francis Richard.
Patrick Taberna gradually builds a work that merges with his life and that of his family. An existence that would be ordinary if it were not woven with travel and photography. “What I want is to suggest rather than really show; I like my images to be little seeds sown in people’s heads and for them to blossom in everyone’s head.”
In 1997, he undertakes a postal exhibition: “Passage en Ouest“. Because they gave him a taste for travel and photography, ten people receive 37 photos each, at a rate of one per week. This adventure allowed him to correspond with Bernard Plossu and Robert Frank for instance.
His photography – still linked to travel but more intimate – then becomes more and more autobiographical and offers images of a past considered without nostalgia, as a richness that enriches the present. ” The visual photography, arts, literature, etc. …: all these are false barriers, there are only images that speak, and others which have nothing to say (some speak because they have nothing to say, with the language as commonplace ? Poetry is not that simple… )(…) This is probably why Patrick Taberna speaks to us, that what counts is not the square or rectangle, or color or black and white, what counts is the fact that these pictures exist because he decided to see them and to take them“(Bernard Plossu about the series Au fil des jours)
Author of two monographs, Patrick Taberna received a mention from Fnac in 2000 for his series “Nord Magnetic“, a prize from Fnac Paris in 2001 for “Nos Italies” and a prize from the HSBC Foundation for Photography in 2004 for “Au fil des jours“. Regularly exhibited throughout the world, and particularly in Japan, his works have been included in prestigious collections, such as the Collection Agnès b., the Collection François Pinault, and collections of the Centro de Fotografia (Tenerife, Spain), of French arthothèques, of Musée Nicéphore-Niépce – Fnac deposit (France), and of Maison Européenne de la Photographie (France).
Photographer : Patrick Taberna Publisher : Éditions Contrejour First printing : 2022 ISBN : 1090294549 Dimensions : 20cm × 26cm Language : French 96 pages Colour pictures