Guillaume Herbaut

He was the prize-winner of the Fondation de France in 1999, he has dedicated himself for some years now to historical places, filled with symbols and memory. 


''La Zone''. He did an exhibition in the area in and around the Chernobyl power station where there was the nuclear explosion ten years ago. The link to the videos are here, most of them are videos about different people although some are pretty irrelevant! Here's the link, I reckon we probably need to go through them together as my French isn't so great! But there's a couple I've found that interest me so we'll see! I did find some stills from his work which we might be able to use,  


Here is the link to the videos (there's about 30!) http://www.lemonde.fr/week-end/visuel/2011/04/22/la-zone-retour-a-tchernobyl_1505079_1477893.html

And here's the stills I found, 

This photograph was taken in Slaviutich, about 50 kilometers  from Chernobyl. This city was been built after the Chernobyl explosion for workers of the plant who were left without homes. The Soviet government planned to make it an ideal city, however, after it was built, the surrounding  forest was radioactive. The children wearing masks are in School n°4 in Slaviutich, during an emergency training in case of a nuclear explosion. I’ve returned to Chernobyl numerous times since 2001 and am haunted by the place.” - Herbaut

Chknevna, un village à moitié abandonné à l’intérieur de la zone interdite. Après 17 ans de prison pour actes de barbarie et meurtre, il est revenu vivre dans le village de son enfance.

24 ans après la catastrophe, les cimetières d’engins militaires et la centrale de Tchernobyl en Ukraine font l’objet d’un pillage en règle. Chaque semaine, près de deux cents tonnes de métal radioactif quittent la zone d’exclusion. Guillaume Herbaut a réalisé sur le trafic de métal contaminé.

He also uses urbex within his work which I thought MIGHT be perhaps a good way to link that kind of thing in (as we were talking about it on Friday) ... 

AND...

He ALSO does an exhibition called Urakami. His expos are split into 7 parts, all have themes relating to the past and present ... interesting though. 

One is called Urakami, a place which was hit by the atom bomb in WW2

Website to ''Urakami'' - http://www.guillaume-herbaut.com/en/57-2-urakami/.
This video is the one I think I showed you earlier in the term, with the Japonese man with his shirt on/then off revealing some pretty horrific injuries, it also features a small explanation underneath which I thought would go well in the exhibition. 


The still of this ... 

VICTIM : Sumiteru Taniguchi. IMMEDIATE EFFECTS : burns to the back. LONG-TERM EFFECTS : dead tissue and atrophied muscles after 21 months in hospital lying face-down; incurable chest injuries.

ANYWAY it might not be really that relevant to what we're doing, but he has done so much work on the forgotten people etc ... perhaps we could do a contrast. We've discussed those dead, what about those still alive? 

Let me know what you think!