French double-bassist Hélène Labarrière (pictured), a composer of jazz and free improvisation music, has carved herself a singular place on the French music scene. Using influences that range from Breton folk songs to West African rhythms, her music is an indefinable, eclectic mix that has evolved from her initial groundings in jazz when, in her early 20s, her first recording was made with the celebrated American alto saxophonist Lee Konitz. Last month she and her quartet took to the stage at the Sons d’hiver (Winter sounds) festival in the Paris suburb of Saint-Mandé to present their latest work, Désordre. Patrick Artinian filmed their performance and interviewed Labarrière, who says she sees "something political" in the joyous non-order of their music.
Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and the milestone events. Here he captures the atmosphere at Nicolas Sarkozy’s counter-May Day rally in Paris on May 1st, when the incumbent presidential election candidate, forecast by opinion surveys to be trounced by Socialist Party rival François Hollande in the final play-off on Sunday, called on his supporters to turn out en masse in support of “real labour”. The notion, he said, describes he "who gets up very early every morning and goes to bed late at night, who doesn't ask for congratulations, nor medals, nothing.”
Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and the milestone events. This weekend, in the Paris suburb of Vincennes, he mingled with supporters of Socialist Party candidate François Hollande as he held his final major meeting before polling begins in the first of the two-round elections on Sunday April 22nd, just as Nicolas Sarkozy held his own rally in central Paris. It was a crucial media clash between the two main rivals, both eager to display their capability of mobilising supporters en masse. While Sarkozy’s so-called “silent majority” jumped and clapped in blue, white and red at the Place de la Concorde, a demonstrably more black and white crowd, what Hollande calls his “popular majority”, cheered and danced to Caribbean music before the Château de Vincennes.
Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and the milestone events. Here he follows Socialist Party candidate François Hollande on a day-long tour of socially-deprived suburban areas, or banlieues, close to Paris, the scenes of major riots seven years ago, where the turnout for elections is traditionally low. The often disenfranchised population of these neighbourhoods, composed of a comparatively high proportion of North and West African immigrant families, and first- or second-generation French, suffer from an unemployment rate often above twice the national average. At one meeting he exhorted a cheering crowd: “Don’t let others decide in your place, come and vote.” Referring to the stigmatization of ethnic and religious groups during the campaign by both the mainstream Right and Far Right, he said: “When I see you, when I look at you, I don’t guess at your religion by your face. I will not let France’s children be humiliated.”
Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and the milestone events. Here he follows President Nicolas Sarkozy on two contrasting campaign events, beginning with a speech attacking 'doctrinaire' and 'corporatist' magistrates who he accuses of ignoring the voice of victims of crime, and ending with an 8,000-strong rally of the youth movevement of his ruling UMP party.
Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages with soundtracks of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and the milestone events. The coverage will continue all the way to the final vote on May 6th. Here he follows far-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen on her campaign trail in the Seine-et-Marne département (county) that lies just east of Paris, where she was hounded by supporters of the radical-left Front de Gauche alliance.
Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages with soundtracks of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and milestone events which will continue all the way to the final vote on May 6th. Here he follows a triumphant weekend for radical-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon the man representing the Front de Gauche (Front of the Left), a coalition of parties sitting on the left of the Socialist Party, and which includes the Communist Party and his own Party of the Left. It ends with a mass rally at the Place de la Bastille in Paris (pictured), where Mélenchon delivered a rousing speech before a crowd in excess of 100,000 people, calling for a 'civic insurrection'.
Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages with soundtracks of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and milestone events which will continue all the way to the final vote on May 6th. Here he captures the atmosphere at President Nicolas Sarkozy’s major rally on Sunday March 10th at a meeting hall in Villepinte, a suburban town north of Paris, where, before an estimated 30,000 flag-waving supporters, he played the trump cards he hopes will turn around a flagging re-election campaign.
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En pénétrant dans l’imposante église St Sulpice, le pianiste arméno-américain Tigran Hamasyan prend bien soin d’ôter sa casquette avant de se signer “je suis croyant mais pas fanatique » précise t-il. Le mardi 20 octobre, l’église parisienne sera la prochaine étape de sa monumentale tournée, 100 concerts pour les 100 ans du génocide arménien.
