Prepare yourselves. Because later in the show we’ll be welcoming The Prophetic Horns to the studio. And in case you wonder what The Prophetic Horns is, or are, it’s a Paris-based combination of three supercharged wind instrumentalists and a DJ. They’ll be talking to us about how they like to mash up horn solos with original mixes and remixes. First though, and also with a Paris connection, we’re looking at the work of photographer Willy Ronis whose black and white images of the French capital are so renowned they’re now part of the city’s iconography. Along with Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Sabine Weiss, Ronis is often said to be one of the last representatives of French humanist school of photography. A member of the Communist Party for 20 years, he liked to turn his lens on society’s less well-off people and neighbourhoods. “As a man and as a photographer,” he once said, “I will die with my heart firmly on the left.” He also like capturing images of lovers, about which he said: “What a cliché, but why deprive yourself of pleasure?”

Art publications, including research and archival materials, exhibition catalogues, books about art, and more, form an integral part of the art ecology. For artists, books can be works of art and a medium of artistic expression themselves. Earlier this year, Tai Kwun Contemporary presented a book fair called “Booked” that focused on the interplay of art and publications.

The Prophetic Horns are three guys from Paris who play a trumpet, a saxophone, and a trombone, working with a fourth who operates a turntable.
The group fuses electro, jazz, funk and dance music into original mixes, remixes, and customised arrangements. They were in Hong Kong a few months ago to give an outdoor performance for Le French May. Before flying back to their home in France, they came to our studio for a chat.