About the Exhibition

In conjunction with Louisville’s second Photo Biennial, 21c Museum will present a trio of exhibitions exploring contemporary photography from around the world. The lobby gallery will feature Pierre Gonnord, Portraits. Large-scale, highly detailed, and dramatically lit, with dark, blank backgrounds, Gonnord’s images recall the paintings of Goya, Caravaggio, Velasquez and other old masters. Gonnord’s subjects belong to communities on the margins of conventional society—homeless urban youth, gypsies, tattooed Japanese gang members, miners’ families in rural Spain. Gonnord’s art transforms each into a vision of compelling, unexpected beauty and dignity. Face to face with the viewer, these evocative, eloquent portraits are intended, says the artist, “to narrate unique, remarkable stories about our era. Sometimes hostile, almost always fragile, and very often wounded behind the opacity of their masks, they represent social realities and sometimes another concept of beauty.”

Included works:

Michel, 2005
Digital chromogenic print

Ali, 2006
Digital chromogenic print

Luis, 2009
Digital chromogenic print

Konstantina, 2007
Digital chromogenic print

Senen, 2009
Digital chromogenic print

Rui, 2009
Digital chromogenic print

Nico, 2004
Chromogenic print

Emil, 2004
Chromogenic print

TRIO, 2003
Color photograph under Plexiglas

Yakuza, 2003
Color photograph under Plexiglas

ISABEL, 2008
Color photograph under Plexiglas

Miroslaw, 2009
Archival pigment print

Iris from Lusitania Suite, 2011
Color digital photography over Hahnemuhle paper