Filmmaker, script writer, artist and photographer, Agnès Varda was born in Belgium in 1928. She and her husband, the filmmaker Jacques Demy, moved to Los Angeles in 1967 where she lived in Beverly Hills, drove a convertible and frequented Jane Fonda, Michelangelo Antonioni and a young and upcoming newcomer named Harrison Ford. As we head into Oscar night it should be noted that Varda was the first woman director ever to have won an Honorary Oscar, that back in 2017. Varda would make three movies during her Los Angeles period with Demy and produced some of her most memorable photographs there notably of The Black Panthers and the « Love Ins « of the hippie movement. But her pioneering photography career began back in the late 40s, preceding her film career, and a recent inventory of her works revealed some 27,000 negatives and a plethora of prints that were made in the studio of her Parisian home. Varda would take photographs throughout her career which spanned over six decades. 

Today these photographs are the object of an exhibition being held in Los Angeles at the FAHEY/KLEIN Gallery, marking the first exclusive exhibition of her photographs in the United States. Entitled Desire to See: Photographs by Agnès Varda, the exhibition showcases Varda’s singular and unique eye and approach to taking photographs from the stark yet poignant Girl with a Turtle Dove, Paris, 1949, to her nude portraits of women that reveal strength above beauty, as well as documentary photographs of her journeys to China in 1957 and Cuba in 1962. And of note an uncanny photograph of a young Harrison Ford taken in Los Angeles in 1968. Ford caught the eye of Varda’s husband, Jacques Demy, of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg fame,  who wanted him to star in his movie Model Shop back in 1969 but the studio (Columbia Pictures) wanted a well-known actor for the part. Ford and the couple would become friends. 

The Desire to See: Photographs by Agnès Varda exhibition which runs until April 13th was organized with the collaboration of the Estate of Agnès Varda and the curator Rani Singh and is being held in parallel with the exhibition Director’s Inspiration Agnès Varda being held at the museum of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles until January 5th 2025. After her death, her children Rosalie Varda et Mathieu Demy signed a partnership with the Institut de la photographie des Hauts de France, the Photography Institute of Northern France, which allowed for an inventory of her vast archives. Varda’s photographs are represented by the Nathalie Obadia gallery of Paris and Brussels. Agnès Varda died in Paris in 2019 at the age of 91. Her films, photographs and unique and greatly admired artistic legacy remain. ©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette. FAHEY/KLEIN Gallery, 148 North La Brea, between 1st Street and Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA 90036, USA, +(323) 934-2250. http://www.faheykleingallery.com/