Agnès Varda: A Filmmaker’s Photos in the Spotlight through April 13

The National Herald

March 13, 2024

Agnès Varda: A Filmmaker’s Photos in the Spotlight in [Los Angeles] through April 13

The French New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda, who made ‘Cléo from 5 to 7’ and ‘Vagabond’, among other films, was also a talented photographer. Of Greek descent on her father’s side, Varda studied art history and photography and was a professional photographer until she made her first film, when she was 26. She passed away in 2019 at the age of 90. Through April 13, the Fahey/Klein Gallery is showing ‘Desire to See: Photographs by Agnès Varda’, the first exhibition in the U.S. devoted to her photography. The photobooks ‘La Pointe Courte’ and ‘Agnès Varda: Expo 54’ were both published in 2023 by Delpire.

The exhibition includes self-portraits, portraits of fellow artists (including Guy Bourdin, Alexander Calder, and the actress Dorothée Blanck), as well as photographs she took on her extensive travels to Cuba, China, and Italy, among other places. Varda, who was born in Belgium but made her home in Paris, also lived in Los Angeles for a time, where she made a documentary about the Black Panthers and ‘Mur Mur’, a film about the murals decorating the city, and, simultaneously, took photographs – of Harrison Ford, among other people. The photographs in ‘Desire to See’ – such as ‘Salt Mountain, Sète, France, 1954’ – have the astonishing sense of composition and playful spirit that made her films so influential.