Born in New York City in March 1961, photographer Mark Steinmetz was living in a derelict apartment outside of Boston when he received an artist’s residency in the South of France aged 26 years old.
Flying to Paris in August 1987, Steinmetz lodged with close family friends in a top floor apartment on the Avenue de Wagram, running around Paris photographing all day before returning at night for dinner and a glass of champagne. With friends working in fashion and film, despite the photographer’s lack of funds, he was gifted a corduroy jacket to wear that the American actress Jean Seberg had cried on, and slept on a bed that had once belonged to Jane Fonda. The young artist had arrived.
A time before mobile phones, digital cameras and social media, and a time where in order to meet up with somebody you had to set a time and a place and each of you stick to the plan, 1987 was a period where folk seemed to have more time to be be in the moment, to live and to create, to simply be. As Steinmetz comments in the introduction of his new book “The parks, museums, and subways were less crowded. The rhythm of daily life was more relaxed. People were worried in 1987, but not as worried as we are now.”
Published by Nazraeli Press, France 1987 features a collection of previously unpublished photographs captured by Mark Steinmetz during his extended stay. An insight into his earliest years as a working artist, the 80-page book comprises over 60 photographs printed in duotone on Japanese Kasadaka art paper and bound in Burgundy linen, and is limited to just 1,000 casebound copies.
Available now and priced at £61.80, France 1987 by Mark Steinmetz is a look through the lens at a world where time passed more slowly, where living in the moment was the de facto way of life, and those who captured those moments were more concerned with seeing than being seen.
