© Magali Nougaréde
Matt Gaw talks to Magali Nougaréde about her poignant new work.
Made on the English south coast and the French Cote d’Albatre, this photographic exhibition by Magali Nougaréde results from a series of interactions with members of local communities.
Building on her earlier Toeing the Line (2000), the exhibition, at the Gardner Arts Centre until March 19, 2006, consists of a series of intensely coloured studies of the young and elderly. By zooming in on the minutiae of everyday dress, be it tracksuit or tweed, Nougaréde harnesses the particular and the personal elements of body language and adornment – hinting at the contrasting worlds of different generations
Nougaréde said: “The new work uses the same visible strategies, as Toeing the Line, and builds on previous work, but the work has shifted in quite a subtle way. I still use close ups; and looking at portraits of people, looking at maybe their identity and their cultural values through their body language and the way they dress.”
Crossed hands and pastels symbolise the dignified formality of a generation that has always “done the right thing”. These are photographs of the last people to have direct memories of the Second World War; a fact alluded to by one of the Normandy locations.
© Magali Nougaréde
In sharp, vibrant contrast to the muted browns and greys of the elderly are Nougaréde’s teenagers. Cheerfully exposed backs and bright synthetic colours replace the old hands and work-worn fingers.
The teenager’s post-modern world is one scrubbed clean of national territory. Where the clothes of the elderly may offer clues to their origin, a tricolour badge or a submariners’ association crest, here the only identity offered is the global swoosh of Nike.
This is a deliberate gesture by Nougaréde, the idea that the young representatives of global culture, for example the bearded man in a blue Nike t-shirt, “could really be from anywhere”.
The act and process of taking these photographs is something that Nougaréde holds as being important. She said: “I only photograph people I don’t know. I kind of pace around all day on the seafront, or on the street and stop people. I scan people in the street and select people whose clothing or body language is interesting to me and ask if I can photograph them.”
© Magali Nougaréde
Nougaréde likens the gathering of pictures over a period of months and years to a “treasure hunt”. She explains:
“Visually, I’m a woman of details. If I read a story I won’t be able to sum up the story, but I’ll probably remember a tiny bit of a chapter. So that’s what I’m attracted to visually. If I walk in the street and see an old lady with a great coat I just get really excited and want to photograph her immediately.”
Nougaréde manages to exist somewhere in between the photographed worlds of youthful, globalised culture and the more formal world of war-time generation. Her pictures express simultaneous warmth and detachment from her subjects along with a feeling of melancholy at melting values.
“There is affection, a nostalgia for old people. Maybe for the fact that elderly people as we see them now dressed as they are . . . we won’t see them any more. There is also an awareness that they’re the last living witnesses to the Second World War.”
One teenager in a union-jack t-shirt highlights the difference in values and concerns between the two generations. Here, the stylised flag is something to be casually appropriated rather than passionately defended.
Times do change, but while the disappearance of rigid notions of nationality and accompanying jingoism may be no bad thing, the loss of a generation that remembers the struggles of a time when national identity was not a lifestyle choice but a question of survival surely is.
It is important then, that the shifting nature of our increasingly global culture is expressed with humility and humanity.
