Mois de la Photo 2012: Radical Photography by Tosani, Cohen, Mercadier, Descottes, Pane, Herbaut

The 2012 Mois de la Photo in Paris featured six standout exhibitions. Patrick Tosani's 'Prises d'air' at Galerie In Situ/Fabienne Leclerc (Oct 24–Nov 24) presents cut-open objects like fans and gourds as monumental photographic sculptures, exploring scale and abstraction through black, white, and gray tones. Lynne Cohen's 'Ni l'une ni l'autre' at the same gallery shows large-format color interiors devoid of human presence, creating vertiginous, sci-fi-like spaces. Corinne Mercadier's 'Devant un champ obscur' at Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire (Oct 31–Dec 1) uses digital tools to produce two series, Black Screen and Solo, treating light as theater and exploring solitude. Nicolas Descottes' 'Collisions' at Galerie Pierre Brullé (Oct 20–Dec 1) depicts catastrophes—fires, crashes, explosions—with a blend of plastic beauty and burlesque irony. A major retrospective of Gina Pane at Galerie Kamel Mennour (Oct 12–Nov 24) covers her entire oeuvre from geometric paintings to body art. Guillaume Herbaut's photographs at Carré de Baudouin (Nov 9–Jan 5, 2013) document fractures of history—Chernobyl, Auschwitz, Ciudad Juarez—using medium-format color and frontal compositions to evoke invisible death and the threat of forgetting.