Pierre Jamet, Belle-Ile en Mer 1930-1960

Acquiring his first camera in 1924, Pierre Jamet is associated with the Humanist Photography movement and some of his pictures are amongst the most important of his time. This is his first retrospective in Ireland and it focuses on Belle-Ile en Mer, an island of the coast of Brittany where Jamet worked as a young man and spent the later years of his life.

In the 1930s, Jamet worked at a number of jobs so as to earn a living: radio in the merchant navy, typist, model, extra and later director of a holiday camp in Belle-île-en-mer. At the time of the Popular Front, the alliance of political parties in France aimed at resisting Fascism, he was intensely involved in the rapid development of the Youth Hostel movement. During this period he took a huge number of photographs of these young people so ardent and happy to be alive at that time.

Having kept close to a modest France as well as a creative one, Jamet's photographic work is diverse. Wanting to record reality he was, among others, the author of important historic traits.
In this exhibition, his photographs mirror the everyday life on the island of Belle-Ile off Brittany, France.

Belle-Ile en Mer will run until the 10th September.

Words: Laura Garvey

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