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What do Crazy Horse and Bartabas have in common?
Antoine Poupel! Exclusive photographer of the legendary cabaret for thirty years and for twenty-five years that of the famous director of equestrian shows.
Body, movement, aesthetics, sensuality.
Shortly before summer, heads to Malakoff to meet this artist with a black, sober busi- ness card, highlighting a dancer from Crazy Horse. Impossible to hide a certain curio- sity.
Malakoff, a commune in Hauts-de-Seine, has the feel of a provincial town with its streets dotted with small brick or millstone houses. Find the tower. The one in which Antoine Poupel has his workshop. On the twentieth floor!
The door opens to reveal a tall figure. Obvious simplicity, frank look shaded with a hint of shyness. A few steps and your eyes widen at the view. Bay windows, a one hun- dred and eighty degree view of Paris and the greater suburbs. For the “almost” three hundred and sixty degrees, it will be from the immense terrace. This workshop with mezzanine is a true escape into the sky.
“If I chose the photographic medium, it is to deconstruct its mechanical character, to reintroduce the part of the artist who uses light as a pictorial material.»
At a very young age, Antoine Poupel felt comfortable with photography, both during the shooting and during the development in the laboratory.
At the Beaux-Arts du Havre where he comes from, he learned different techniques and discovered other mediums. This learning will nourish his creative spirit and open many windows onto a very personal creation. His subject for obtaining his diploma was precisely on the relationship between photography and painting.