Nouvelle Vague is a tribute to the late 1950s French New Wave art film movement, which rejected traditional filmmaking to explore narrative and existential themes in a documentary style. La Galerie Paris 1839 presents a retrospective of Chantal Stoman's series, which includes Nouvelle Vague, Visiting Paris, Tokyo Trip, Copacabana, New Orleans, and Suntory. These works reveal a strong artistic style, with images shot in different locations and atmospheres, seemingly different chapters of the same book, revealing the artist's strong style. 

Stoman uses accessories like shoes, bags, glasses, and hats to set scenes, transforming them from mere fashion into keys that unlock character stories and interactions. Her cinematographic images create a sense of time, showcasing both before and after moments. The fashion elements conceal and reveal character identities, while Stoman's deliberate composition enhances the relationships between characters and their environments. Every character carries significance, with the main character’s actions impacting others. 

By examining these dynamics, Stoman highlights the connections between characters and their reflected images, as perceived by others and themselves. Her narrative approach invites viewers to engage and complete the stories, exploring themes reminiscent of the New Wave films. 

Chantal Stoman

Chantal Stoman is a French photographer and filmmaker based in Paris. She spent her early years as a fashion photographer. In 2005, after a decade of collaborating with the fashion industry, she began a new chapter with art photography projects. Her recent work seems far removed from fashion, but it retains traces of the skills she honed in her early years, a special vision. 

Stoman describes her photography as an exploration of the relationships between people, intimacy, and places, revealing cultural insights. She uses fashion elements like bags and shoes not as the focal point, but as supporting elements in her visual storytelling. 

Her photographs are like short films. They explore the elusive beauty that makes a film scene or a moment in life vibrate. She combines her skills to create a very personal and accomplished work of art.

Chantal Stoman's recent projects have explored cities and memory. She has focused on various big cities: the urban environment is not a backdrop but a central element in her projects. A place where past and present are linked. In her earlier black and white works from all over the world - which will be presented in the forthcoming exhibition NOUVELLE VAGUE - we can already see the themes she would develop later on: the relationship between people, heritage and the present. 

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