Agnès Varda at Musée Carnavalet
‘We writers are but humble gleaners, gathering fragments of conversation and observation, and shaping them into meaningful prose.’ When, in the autumn of 2023, HART magazine changed its name to GLEAN, our editor-in-chief Kathleen Weyts explained the decision by referencing Agnès Varda’s 2000 documentary film The Gleaners and I. The comparison casts writers as gleaners — those who, whether out of necessity, or for artistic or ethical reasons, collect what has been left behind: crops in the field after harvest, discarded food and objects. Varda remains a guiding light in our editorial choices, and when the Musée Carnavalet in Paris announced a new exhibition promising to bring to light a lesser-known side of her art — Varda as photographer — we couldn’t let the opportunity pass to give renewed attention to our namesake. Wolfram Vandenbergen offers some impressions of a visit to an exhibition that reminds him of his own Paris, one far removed from Varda’s city of small urban communities and metropolitan glitz.
Two contradictory things can be true at the same time, Hegelian dialectics has taught me as much. People are cruel to each other, people are caring. A cat is an earthly creature, but can also grow angel wings. You can make someone invisible while looking straight at them. Switching positions, refusing to be defined singularly may be confusing to others, but it can offer a great deal of freedom. Sometimes being confusing is a strategy, a plan of escape. Agnès Varda represented the voice and spir (…)
