Claude Nori, Photographer, Publisher of the Photography Revolution

updated November 9, 2012 
articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  Haight Japan local magazine manufacture icon literature Group music  news performance San Francisco Reading  writing style short story-ies seventies small business micro travel Thailand underground voyage video 

articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  Haight Japan local magazine manufacture icon literature Group music  news performance San Francisco Reading  writing style short story-ies seventies small business micro travel Thailand underground voyage video 

Monica Vitti, filming "L'Avventura" with director Michelangelo Antonioni, photographed by Claude Nori, Naples 1982

 articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  Haight Japan local magazine manufacture icon literature Group music  news performance San Francisco Reading  writing style short story-ies seventies small business micro travel Thailand underground voyage video 

Claude Nori occupies a unique place in the history of French

photography, with a compilation of works begun in 1968, and his publishing company Contrejour, founded in 1975 in order to publish his first photography book Lunettes.  He permitted a whole generation of contemporary artists, humanist phtographers and several of the greatest forgotten masters to publish their first books, which created along with exhibits, the original creative space of the new wave of French photography.  He edited the reviews of Les Cahiers de la Photographie and Camera International.   He opened a gallery in Montparnasse, and published in under twenty years more than 160 works, which are at the heart of the grand revolution which brought photography to its golden age.   Today, these works still hold their place as a major art reference source.articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  

He relaunched the Contrejour publications in 2011, with his wife Isabella Nori.Haight Japan local magazine manufacture icon literature Group music  news performance San Francisco Reading  writing style short story-ies seventies small business micro travel Thailand underground voyage video 

--Translated by Cho

A bit of happiness, by Claude Noriarticles author art journal museum gallery  

Translation by Cindy Cho 

Without a doubt, photographing happy moments is a more difficult act than photographing suffering or dramatic events.  Capturing happiness is like attempting to grasp a bubble of soap with your hands.  This elusiveness is due to the idea that in order to capture this "bubble" one must be at the interior of same bubble, and that one awkward gesture could make the bubble explode.  We, ourselves, must be inside the happy moment to attempt to capture it... When we are happy, we do not feel truly the desire to photograph but instead, we let ourselves  slip into the high of the moment, of drinking, of eating, of embracing others, of letting the body sink into a whirlpool of senses.  It is not like the act of writing, where one can describe the perfume of a woman's skin, or the color of the her eyes, even when one is alone in a hotel room afterwards.  With the photo, one must retrieve in a split-second the light, the framing, the composition, the objects which distract the eye and disturb the whole, in order to communicate this moment of happiness.  And sometimes, it doesn't work, and the the harmony around us blurs until it disappears.  articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  Haight Japan local magazine manufacture icon literature Group music  news performance San Francisco Reading  writing style short story-ies seventies small business micro travel Thailand underground voyage video 

Then, it is necessary to respect the organic nature of things, to not battle nature.

There is no use in cheating with photography.  

Just as man wanders a long while across savage  landscapes, it has come to me the desire to see the city life.  Just as Marco Polo in the Invisible Cities of Calvino, I finally put down my bags not at Isidora, but at Biarritz, a small city of the seaside, in the basque country, famous for its art deco architecture, its pastries and its surfers.  I settled there in 1999, with Isabella, in order to be happy, to create a photography festival, and to contemplate the ocean through the view of a casino, the form a sort of metaphysical column, whose shadow forms an arrow pointing towards the waves.  Ebullient, capricious, terrifying at times, the ocean takes the airs of the Mediterranean with its very pure blue... and the little white clouds which fly across the azure sky, in the manner of Neapolitan prints.  I have the sensation of arriving at the end of the world, the life's burden lightened, ready to roll in the waves of a new life before me....in this open setting, it seems that ennui and pains are less heavy to bear, at least for a time....  --Translations by Cho

I have always been balanced between two genres, film and photography, between two cultures, France and Italy, between sweet memories and the eternal search for this happiness which is an inexhaustible source of creativity and which forms a certain philosophy for life.  

--Translation of Claude Nori text, by Cho

articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  Haight Japan local magazine manufacture icon literature Group music  news performance San Francisco Reading  writing style short story-ies seventies small business micro travel Thailand underground voyage video 

articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  Haight Japan local magazine manufacture icon literature Group music  news performance San Francisco Reading  writing style short story-ies seventies small business micro travel Thailand underground voyage video 

Work of Various Photographers, Éditions du Contrejour, Magazine published by Nori

Claude Nori occupies a unique place in the history of French

photography, with a compilation of works begun in 1968, and his publishing company Contrejour, founded in 1975 in order to publish his first photography book Lunettes.  He permitted a whole generation of contemporary artists, humanist phtographers and several of the greatest forgotten masters to publish their first books, which created along with exhibits, the original creative space of the new wave of French photography.  He edited the reviews of Les Cahiers de la Photographie and Camera International.   He opened a gallery in Montparnasse, and published in under twenty years more than 160 works, which are at the heart of the grand revolution which brought photography to its golden age.   Today, these works still hold their place as a major art reference source.articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  

He relaunched the Contrejour publications in 2011, with his wife Isabella Nori.

--Translated by Cho

A bit of happiness, by Claude Nori 

Translation by Cindy Cho 

Without a doubt, photographing happy moments is a more difficult act than photographing suffering or dramatic events.  Capturing happiness is like attempting to grasp a bubble of soap with your hands.  This elusiveness is due to the idea that in order to capture this "bubble" one must be at the interior of same bubble, and that one awkward gesture could make the bubble explode.  We, ourselves, must be inside the happy moment to attempt to capture it... When we are happy, we do not feel truly the desire to photograph but instead, we let ourselves  slip into the high of the moment, of drinking, of eating, of embracing others, of letting the body sink into a whirlpool of senses.  It is not like the act of writing, where one can describe the perfume of a woman's skin, or the color of the her eyes, even when one is alone in a hotel room afterwards.  With the photo, one must retrieve in a split-second the light, the framing, the composition, the objects which distract the eye and disturb the whole, in order to communicate this moment of happiness.  And sometimes, it doesn't work, and the the harmony around us blurs until it disappears.  articles author art journal museum gallery exhibit  Book Murakami  south east Asia  Bangkok crafts ceramics clothing designer film review movie director actress actor Europe France French Paris street-life fashion photographer show mode models graffiti  Haight Japan local magazine manufacture icon literature Group music  news performance San Francisco Reading  writing style short story-ies seventies small business micro travel Thailand underground voyage video 

Then, it is necessary to respect the organic nature of things, to not battle nature.

There is no use in cheating with photography.  

Just as man wanders a long while across savage  landscapes, it has come to me the desire to see the city life.  Just as Marco Polo in the Invisible Cities of Calvino, I finally put down my bags not at Isidora, but at Biarritz, a small city of the seaside, in the basque country, famous for its art deco architecture, its pastries and its surfers.  I settled there in 1999, with Isabella, in order to be happy, to create a photography festival, and to contemplate the ocean through the view of a casino, the form a sort of metaphysical column, whose shadow forms an arrow pointing towards the waves.  Ebullient, capricious, terrifying at times, the ocean takes the airs of the Mediterranean with its very pure blue... and the little white clouds which fly across the azure sky, in the manner of Neapolitan prints.  I have the sensation of arriving at the end of the world, the life's burden lightened, ready to roll in the waves of a new life before me....in this open setting, it seems that ennui and pains are less heavy to bear, at least for a time....  --Translations by Cho

I have always been balanced between two genres, film and photography, between two cultures, France and Italy, between sweet memories and the eternal search for this happiness which is an inexhaustible source of creativity and which forms a certain philosophy for life.  

--Translation of Claude Nori text, by Cho

Work of Various Photographers, Éditions du Contrejour, Magazine published by Nori

more Claude Nori Photos

English translation above, top of page, and in main posting