SECRET CITY

Jason Langer and Robert Doisneau

Michael Hoppen Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition exploring two very different perspectives on a city theme this December. Images from Secret City, Langer’s ten year retrospective of urban portraits and nudes will be shown alongside rare vintage prints documenting Doisneau’s sixty year love affair with Paris and its inhabitants.

Robert Doisneau’s name and iconic images have become synonymous with what we know of 1940s Parisian street life. Doisneau’s Paris is full of individuals and personalities- they react, respond and converse with one another- and their backdrop is one of the most familiar cityscapes in the world.
His great ability was to capture the ordinary and make it both extraordinary and memorable -a couple in a bistro, an accordion player or a woman reacting in shock to a painting in a gallery window. His acute awareness as to how his camera could capture a moment of emotion still informs advertising and magazine content today, and his empathy and understanding of urban life created some of the most iconic photo-story images taken in the 20th Century.

Jason Langer on the other hand captures a city full of secrets. His images depict individuals whose identities are hidden or are portrayed in an anonymous, elusive manner- concealed by semi-darkness, blurred, expression blank, backs turned, or veiled by clothing. The meaning of the photograph is not apparent but hinted at, as Langer feels “that people prefer to create their own story and find their own meaning, instead of having it spelled out for them.”
Langer’s interiors and cityscapes share a sense of privacy and anonymity, yet the exterior scenes are imbued with identifiable mental and emotional sense of place- a city we all recognise yet cannot identify, at once ageless and contemporary. Our exhibition includes work from New York, Paris and London.

Langer was honoured in 2006 with the “Rising Star” award from Palm Beach Photographic Centre’s Fotofusion. Jason's work appears regularly in the literary journal The Sun and he has been profiled and made appearances in many publications such as American Photo, Black and White, Life, Photo Metro, Popular Photography, Time, Inc. and Vanity Fair.