Chronicles of a Portraitist, New York City, "972th" 5th avenue, 2009

The exhibition Chroniques d’un portraitiste has been inaugurated on the occasion of the PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL OF INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE Evolution/Revolution

Gérard Rondeau has photographed hundreds of celebrities from all walks of life, ranging from Carla Bruni to Léo Castelli, often for the French newspaper Le Monde. For this edition of his “Chronicles of a Portraitist,” he has highlighted well-known figures as Jean Baudrillard, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jacques Derrida, Gilbert & George, Claude Lanzmann, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Mitchell, Patrick Modiano, Jean-Jacques Sempé, Richard Serra, Philippe Starck, and George Steiner.

“Rondeau uses a conception of the portrait which is similar to that of Manet and Cézanne. Manet and Cézanne’s faces are not the explicit masks of a feeling or social status. They raise numerous suggestions, which are as contradictory and changeable as each individual...
The same goes for Rondeau’s portraits: it is about the interval between two definable attitudes and thus gives each of the people he photographs their depths and enigmas”. Philippe Dagen, art critic, writer