Le Gendarme Sur La Colline: Photographs by Alessandra Sanguinetti

Le Gendarme Sur La Colline (The Policeman on the Hill) brings together a new body of work from Alessandra Sanguinetti, as part of the second installment of Immersion, A French American Photography Commission, a program between the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès and Aperture Foundation.

Sanguinetti began her stay in France in Calais, the main seaport for anyone coming from the USA, and then traveled the country by bus, by train, or by car, from Calais to Marseille, before completing her residency in Paris. Sanguinetti explores a France in which traditions are being played out in a variety of ways as the culture begins to shift in relation to migration, growing contrasts between isolated rural communities and the more cosmopolitan cities, alongside other contemporary stresses. Rather than a documentary approach, Sanguinetti’s photographs offer an intuitive, lyrical journey that engages with the classic cultural tropes of France, as well as with the fairytales that persist and help define what it means to be French, even today.

Coproduced with the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.

About the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès alliance with Aperture Foundation

In 2014, the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès launched a program of photographers’ residencies and exchanges, exhibitions, and publications with Aperture Foundation in New York. The program marks the renewed commitment of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès to intervene upstream in the creative process, with support for the production of new photographic work, and a new partnership with a distinguished, internationally acclaimed photography institution.

Aperture’s exhibitions are also funded, in part, with support from the Grace Jones Richardson Trust, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.