22/06 - 23/09/2012   

18/10 - 30/11 2013 BWA Katowice (PL)

 Within the context of our intellectual friendship with the editor Michel Husson, Atelier 340 Muzeum shows a portrait gallery of Havanacigar smokers by the Canadian photographer Pascal Rouet.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Michel Husson has edited a magnificent catalogue with black and white photographies. Atelier 340 Muzeum shows about thirty of these prints.
« At the end of the last millenium, Pascal Rouet, a Canadian photographer, spent time in a region of Cuba called Vuelta Abajo photographing the workers of a small cigar workshop. His efforts resulted in a gallery of bucaneers and pirates who chew away at their chair leg size cigars, while savagely observing the photographer who was obviously unable to imitate them while taking pictures.
Considering the fact that each of these workers had undoubtedly been raised by parents who themselves had gone through life with a cigar held firmly between their lips, it is not surprising that all of them knew precisely the angle at which to place their cigars relative to Pascal's lense. Real cigars, of course, and not the atrocious industrial products produced by multinationals! The cigars in these pictures have been assembled from tobacco the workers themselves have planted, cut and dried, sometimes in their own bedrooms, cigars that have been individually hand-rolled by their wives: genuine « puros », pure Havanas!
Sadly, Pascal Rouet passed away in 2002, at the age of 37. » (Michel Husson)