The First Hour

The First Hour

Horikawa Oike Gallery

This event has ended.

Thierry Bouët is a French photographer who will show 24 images of newborns in the first hour after they were born. As these babies get their first glimpse of the world, their faces are still red and wrinkled. Some find it hard to even open their eyes. In these images, Bouët is after truth, not beauty. His style is uniform and consistent: just faces, head on, minimal background, with no retouching or other modifications. The hospital he works with is the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic in a Paris suburb where his own daughter was born. The newborns in his photographs were all conceived there through in-vitro fertilization. Bouët’s goal is to capture the emotions on the faces of these infants. The portraits are a record of the power of life in those humans who would not be here were it not for technology.

Thierry Bouët studied law, and began his career as a military photographer. He was director of the well-known Studio Harcourt before he went independent in 1983. His portrait and reportage photographs have appeared in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair and other magazines. In 2011, he was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by France’s Ministry of Culture.

* This exhibition is part of the Kyotographie International Photography Festival.

Media

• Photography

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