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‘STARING BACK’ ON VIEW AT PETER BLUM

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NEW YORK CITY — Peter Blum presents the exhibition “Chris Marker: Staring Back,” on view through November at Peter Blum SoHo and Peter Blum Chelsea.

“Chris Marker: Staring Back” is an exhibition of almost 200 photographs taken over the course of six decades by the enigmatic and influential French filmmaker. This show, organized by Bill Horrigan at the Wexner Center for the Arts, is the first exhibition of Marker’s photographs, and consist of images selected by the artist himself from his own archive, including black and white portraits of individuals that Marker has encountered during the course of his world travels.

Divided into four sections, “Staring Back” is organized around the idea of the faces Marker has seen in his travels, and of the faces that have in turn witnessed his observant gaze — “I stare” and “They stare,” as he puts it.

Central to the exhibition are his depictions of political demonstrations from Algerian independence protests in 1962 to the Pentagon march in 1967, to May 1968 in Paris, and continuing to 2006 in a series devoted to the sustained demonstrations by French young people against punitive employment legislation.

Interspersed throughout the exhibition are photographic traces of his inimitable films, including La Jetee, Letter from Siberia, The Sixth Face of the Pentagon, Cuba Si!, Le fond de l’air est rough and The Case of the Grinning Cat.

Marker has also produced acclaimed media installations, including “Owls at Noon Prelude: the Hollow Men,” shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2005 and presented by Peter Blum at the Art Basel Unlimited in 2006, and “Silent Movie,” which the Wexner commissioned in 1995 through its residency program, and which subsequently traveled to over a dozen other venues internationally.

Peter Blum SoHo is at 99 Wooster Street and Peter Blum Chelsea is at 526 West 29th Street. For information, www.peterblumgallery.com or 212-244-6055.