Bernard Dubuis
Tant et temps de passages - Many times and places reviewed

Exhibition: 21 March to 30 August 2014
Opening: 20 March 2014

Educated at the Vevey School of Photography, Bernard Dubuis opened his photography studio in Sion at the end of the 1970s. The special way he looked at the world around him, both very precise but not without a sense of tenderness and humour, quickly got him known and won him the trust of various groups, and in this way he would often get involved in long-term projects: the Combats de Reines (champion cow fighting), the Rhône and the development of its major projects over the last decades: road or rail tunnels, hydroelectric power stations and various other construction projects.

As a humanist and documentary photographer in the Magnum tradition (Guy le Querrec, Larry Towell or Abbas), he was more concerned with the duration and deepening of a photographic job than in a quick kill for the press. This desire, even need, to build a memory of everything surrounding him, led him to develop the Photographic Enquiry together with two photographers and a historian between1989-2005 and to collaborate at the Focale-Nyon Association in its creation in1984. Since his training, Bernard Dubuis has been a loyal user of the Leica M, adapted to a discreet approach without aggressiveness. Solidity and resistance made him a particularly welcome partner in the damp and dusty world of the large studios. With his equipment, he threaded his way to the heart of his subject, using ambient light, and had the gift of effacing himself….. This was how his most beautiful images came into being.

We have been following Bernard Dubuis for many years through his exhibitions and publications. He was able to remain faithful to a technical and visual approach selected from the beginning that gave the main focus to the eye, the look and the desire to photograph. This exhibition is not a retrospective, but rather a series of rapid glimpses arising from the many meetings of this photographer over a forty-year period. This exhibition is also a fitting way to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Leica M…..

The exhibition is commemorated by a publication appearing in the Editions Monographic in Sierre.