Monaco’s diverse community comes to life through a video portrait exhibition
Government of Monaco / Manuel Vitali
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Until 3 January 2021, video portraits depicting Monaco’s multi-cultural and multi-faceted community are on show at the Quai Antoine 1er exhibition space.
Dancers, construction workers, sportspeople, students… The exhibition wants to immortalise “different groups or communities that represent the country’s identity”. Filmed by photographer Charles Fréger, video portraits only lasts a few seconds. The portraits are projected on ceiling-high screens in the Quai Antoine 1er exhibition space.
Video portraits: a first for the photographer
The French photographer has been working on a project called “photographic and uniform portraits” (or “Portraits photographiques et uniformes” in French) since the early 2000s. His work depicts “the cloth, the uniform, the pageantry and how through them the individual represents the group, the community”, explains Charles Fréger.
“In Monaco, the project was carried out a little differently,” explains Björn Dahlström, the exhibition’s curator. “ it is almost as if here, the artist has brought to life the aesthetic of a country’s interrelations,” he says. In light of Covid-19 and of social distancing measure, Charles Fréger decided to film his portraits rather than simply photograph them, in order to create “greater proximity between the subject and its public”.