Storytelling

This long-term project took many years to find the most irreproachable legitimacy beyond their first publications in Paris Match. Fortunately, mentalities have evolved since then and the relevancy of their message is now the most inarguably contemporary, both artistically and politically. Their “still lifes” of vintage advertisements and brands elegantly arranged against a velvet background give these contemporary “herbariums” their full importance. They can also be considered individual or collective portraits of their owner-depositaries… through their garbage.

Their concept began in 1988 with Serge Gainsbourg’s trashcan, Rue de Verneuil, like a thumbing of the nose to “the man with a cabbage head” that became an unintentional caricature: cigarette butts, old bottles, letters, and newspapers of all kinds.

This was just the beginning of what was to become an incessant professional inquiry, first in Paris and that would later take them from Hollywood to Moscow, from Reagan to the poor of Malawi, from Madonna to Jack Nicholson; on an uncompromising mission that nonetheless avoided degrading intrusion as much as it did the control of a higher authority or of the presumed waste-creators. Scientific samples that are also ethical in the sense that they respect the individual, the large formats by Mouron et Rostain are grand frescoes of the history of our civilisation, exposed in the stomach if not in the temple of consumerism.

With their large-format images, words are superfluous since the eloquence of the images is meticulously constructed thanks to the quality of the print, the mastery of the organisation and composition, to their perfect knowledge of the vocabulary of the design and packaging, to the rigour of the scientific exposé and the neutral lighting. A sure-fire hit: masters of communication from the offices of the biggest marketing agencies, their message hits all targets with all the precision of an elite shooter.

THEIR EXHIBITIONS ACROSS THE GLOBE

They fossick through the trashcans of celebrities to photograph waste and packaging, represented to scale in their prints measuring between 1.80 m and 2.40 m, then exhibited on the picture rails in museums across the globe, from Moscow to Singapore, to Paris. They are the most environmentally friendly of pop artists and the most formidable whistleblowers. In this way, they have brought “Paparazzism” up to date with brio and kicked the moralisers to the kerb.

This “work in progress” has already been shown at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie de Paris in 2007 and the Centre Pompidou Metz in 2014 under the generic title "Trash", as well as at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, New York, Moscow, Singapore, Taiwan, and Geneva. Their work represented France at the most recent World Expo in Milan, in 2015.