Lise Sarfati

Lise Sarfati (born 1958) is a French photographer.^[1] Her images of cities in Russia and young people in the United States paint a despondent picture inspired by her own imagination.

Biography

Born in Oran, Algeria, Sarfati grew up in Nice, France, graduating in Russian from the Sorbonne in 1979 with a thesis on Russian photography. In 1986, she became the official photographer for the Académie des Beaux Arts. From 1989 to 1998, she lived in Russia, photographing decaying industrial sites and abandoned young people in Moscow, Norilsk and Vorkuta. Her first book, Acta Est, presents 43 of her Russian photographs and explains her imaginative appreciation of deterioration, change and beauty.^[2]

In 2003, she photographed solitary young adults in the United States as she travelled through Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana, Oregon, and California. They all appear to lack enthusiasm for action.^[3] The works were first presented as The New Life at New York's Yossi Milo Gallery in 2005 and were published as The New Life/La Vie Nouvelle.^[2] Other American projects have included Austin, Texas (2008), On Hollywood (2010) and She (2012), the latter presenting two middle-aged women.^[4]

Assessment

Writing in The Observer, Sean O'Hagan states that "Sarfati's photographs, though deceptively simple on first viewing, have a mysterious quality that is to do, in part, with her deft merging of portraiture, snapshot and arranged tableau."^[4]

Publications

• Medvedkova, Olga; Sarfati, Lise (2007). Acta Est. Phaidon. ISBN 978-0-7148-4842-6. 
• Sarfati, Lise (2005). The New Life. Twin Palms. ISBN 978-1-931885-45-4. 
• Sarfati, Lise (2008). Fashion Magazine: Lise Sarfati, Austin, Texas. Magnum. ISBN 978-2-952410-22-9. 
• She. Santa Fe: Twin Palms, 2012. ISBN 978-1-936611-00-3

Exhibitions

• FOAM Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam
• Centre National de la Photographie, Paris
• Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris
• La Maison Rouge, Paris
• Domus Artium, Salamanca
• The Nicolaj Center of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen.
• 2012: On Hollywood, Yossi Milo Gallery^[5]
• 2013: She, Brancolini Grimaldi, London^[6]

Collections

Her work is included in the collections of:

• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Brooklyn Museum of Art
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Bibliothèque Nationale de France
• Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris

References

External links

• Lise Sarfati's She: images from The Observer
• Sarfati interviewed about her She exhibition by Sean O'Hagan (video)