Obsession Dietrich (Hardcover)

• Collaged, spliced, and reassembled images of Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich by French photographers Edouard Taufenbach and Bastien Pourtout, created using vintage photographs from the collection of Pierre Passebon
• Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Galerie du Passage-Pierre Passebon from February 15th - March 15th 2022

It was during a chance meeting with the collector Pierre Passebon and French photographers Édouard Taufenbach and Bastien Pourtout that the idea of a commission was born: to tell a story within the story of Passebon's stellar collection of over 500 vintage photographs of Marlène Dietrich. Taufenbach and Pourtout have developed - using their iPhones - a new form of photomontage based on the instantaneous nature of Instagram and the possibility of communicating images remotely. In real time, they mix elements of the photographs; editing, splicing, juxtaposing, and reassembling them. These transformed images of one of the most alluring stars of cinema are a meditation on beauty, fame, and the nature of obsession. "With these effects, comparable to the chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey or the stroboscopy used by Harold Edgerton or Gjon Mili, Édouard Taufenbach and Bastien Pourtout follow a photographic tradition while simultaneously renewing it. This modernity... reveals an obsession: that of Marlène preoccupied with control over her image. She knew, all her life, how to hide under the mask of eternal beauty, as shown in the works assembled here." - Jean-Luc Monterosso. Text in English and French.