ON TOUR
> January 2010 : Alliance Française of Gaborone (Botswana)
> March 2010 : Alliance Française of Maseru (Lesotho)
> April 2010 : Alliance Française of Cape Town (RSA)
> May 2010 : Alliance Française of Port Elizabeth (RSA)
> June 2010 : Alliance Française of Johannesburg (RSA)
> July 2010 : Alliance Française of Pretoria (RSA)
> July 2010 : Alliance Française of Durban (RSA)
> September 2010 : Alliance Française of Mbabane (Swaziland)
For more information
Contact Pauline :
culture.jhb@alliance.org.za
011 646 1169
The countdown is launched…
For the first time in history, the World Cup, probably the most popular event worldwide, will take place in Africa. To celebrate this event, the French Cultural network in Southern Africa and the French Institute of South Africa is proud to present “L’Esprit du Sport”, a crossed vision on the universal passion which is soccer.
Beyond the game itself, French photographer Amélie Debray mainly interested in anonymous people, in France and in South Africa.
How such a sport can gather millions of people ? What makes them so enthusiastic ? Much more than a hobby, football represents a intimate personal involvement. None of those “amateurs” will participate to the Champions League or even become famous. But that’s not the point.
Trainings, matches… where do they find such a motivation ? They come to the stadiums with friends, family… Those supporters are a key element to the scene, and those crowds, gathered around the playground, make a unique and global family. Social and cultural differences vanish : sport, with its own rules and stakes, is the same for everybody. The only thing that matters is motivation, skill, tactics, and sometimes, luck.
In that “Spirit of the Sport”, France, South Africa, and all the other countries make one. Face, on and around the playground, show the same wish for victory, ending up with joy or sadness.
Portraits of players, in locker rooms after matches and practices, photographs reflecting fragility, pride, despair, fatigue and sometimes violence, on or off the field, spectators, refreshment stands, referees…Through her camera, Amélie Debray depicts the many similarities which lay between the two countries. Her pictures are richly descriptive of the unbridled energy of the amateur sportsmen. And at the end, a real and strong dramaturgy gets unveiled : thought “L’Esprit du Sport”, football becomes a metaphor of our universal passions.
ABOUT AMELIE DEBRAY
French photographer Amélie Debray first started to take photographs with a journalistic approach ; she won two photo-journalism awards in 2004 and 2008. Today, she favours a more personal approach, free from the restraints of journalism. With this approach she puts the human being at the core of her focus and has found that the scope of her work has widened in the investigative context. While contextualisation is predominant in her approach she has not neglected the identified space (Home of the Arts of Créteil) and her works have been equally notable in an ultra modern exhibition space and in a Renaissance chapel. From Saumur, where she worked as a resident photographer at the Rencontres Photographiques in 2008, to Southern Africa, where she was plunged in the midst of amateur football with an eye on the next World Cup, she captures the detail of expression and anonymous bodies while revealing the intimacy of the feet of famous personalities at the same time.
“L’ESPRIT DU SPORT” regroups 40 photographs shot by Amélie Debray in Longueuil (Seine Maritime, France), Entrecastreaux (Var, France), Solaize (Rhône, France), Bourganeuf (Creuse, France), Reibeek Kasteel (Western Cape, RSA), Ladysmith (KwaZulu Natal, RSA), Ceres (Western Cape, RSA), and Atlantis (Western Cape, RSA).
