How I met Isabelle Huppert and other surprises

So, last weekend I went to a workshop how to develop photographic film in coffee in Salzburg. On Saturday we walked around in the city center to have some material to practice our darkroom skills. We saw that the Ropac Gallery just opened an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe curated by the French actress Isabelle Huppert. We walked in and at least I was shocked of how dressed up everybody was or better how dressed down I felt.

I was standing in the middle of the entrance hall and Isabelle Huppert and the owner of the gallery walked down the stairs and came to stop right in front of me. A whole bunch of press photographers were suddenly around me, hundreds of flash' went off and I was standing there with a 30 year old Praktica MTL5b loaded with a Kodak TMAX 100 film and couldn't do much. Anyway, I felt pretty stupid but I tried. Guessing the foucs, using 1/30 and aperture wide open I pointed the camera towards the actress and shot: "glong", wind the film and another "glong".

Later when we developed the film I realized that something was wrong with the camera and the film was only transported half a frame. Here is the result. In the left half the focus is more on Thaddaeus Ropac but gives Isabelle a nice glow (all un-indented) and she autopraphed some images of her on the right side.

Some words about the exhibition. Isabelle Huppert chose a little bit more than 100 images. Of course she selected some of the well known themes of flowers and human bodies. However, the exhibition also includes some less known images like earlier work with polaroids and even some landscapes. My personal favorites are the portraits. They speak very much a Mapplethorpe language of tender truth. The exhibition mixes them all. This might be confusing but standing in front of a wall with several pictures, they make sense, the virtually vibrate from the wall. There were too many people and too much hectic around to enjoy the images but the exhibition is open until the end of October and I can go again.