Diversity Week
Image, Place and Identity - "Remembering Paris" exhibition
Thursday 6th August
10.30am-11.15am
Art Gallery
p s s for students, staff and general public
Remembering Paris, with Natalie Hartog-Gautier
Morning Tea included
PASSAGE
The series of photographs are of an area behind the Montparnasse train station in Paris. This area where I lived has been, in part, demolished since.
Wandering along the streets, walking into these buildings overwhelmed me with sadness and, at the same time, I thought how fortunate I was to be witness to a time about to be lost.
Now, I look back at the photographs as a symbol of my own change when I left my birth country, France, to come to live in Australia.
When I left France, my memory had a bank of images, memories of Paris and other places. On journeys back to France, I would notice changes. I have changed too from living in Australia, but felt that, because of my memories, Paris would not.
My memory of France was altered by experiencing two cultures. These images of streets, buildings which no longer exist symbolise the displacement from one country to another: time transforms our physical environment as much our emotional.
- Nathalie Hartog-Gautiers on her series of photos comprising part of the Remembering Paris exhibition