Architecture

This same estate, which was sheltered from the consumerist ferments of the city, the 1980s saw the continuation and conclusion of several building projects which had been undertaken earlier – the Faculty of Law on the one hand, and the Faculty of Psychology and Education on the other – as well as the construction of the new Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. The same period witnessed the inauguration of the Montéfiore Electricity Institute, the Liège University Hospital Centre and the Blanc Gravier Sports Centre. Several architects oversaw to a successful outcome the construction of these buildings, amongst whose ranks featured Claude Strebelle, André Jacqmain, Daniel Boden, Charles Dumont, Jean Maquet and Charles Vandenhove. The latter would also intercede decisively in Liège’s historical centre, overseeing above all the recreation of havens of conviviality and encounters: that of the Saint-Antoine court, built around a central square and protected from the tide of automobiles, is a success in that respect, as is that of the renovation of the Hors-Château area. These architectural endeavours, in which René Greisch was not without having an influence (cable-stayed bridges), broke with the destructive excesses of the 1960s which had so marred the physiognomy of the Meuse city.

Photography

As we can see, in terms of architecture, certain names established themselves before the 1980s. The same was true for photography: that of Hubert Grooteclaes springs immediately to mind, the elderly autodidact who, as a teacher at the Saint-Luc Arts High School, taught a mass of young students many of whom today still acknowledge his influence. Did there for all that exist a Liège school of photography? Not really, even if a majority of the photographers who put on exhibitions and still regularly continue to do so know each other, if only through the Photo Gallery of the Les Chiroux cultural centre, a site open to the public and to exhibitions, not to mention the Arles International Photography sessions which they attended assiduously each year. But in the main they had their own styles and techniques, which obviously made them fully fledged artists in their own right. It suffices to point out that, contrary to their predecessors, who were above all concerned with reportages on the state of society and, generally speaking, producing documentaries, they more readily opted for introspection, with often audacious excursions into the imagination. As for citing all of them, at the risk of forgetting some, the list would be longer than the longest of inventories in the style of Prévert, manifest proof that the photo – be it an act of communication or artistic creativity – had been established for a good, long while in our society of the image. We can hope that it will soon find in Liège – as is the case in Charleroi – a museum devoted to it.

Cinema

The field of audiovisual creativity, on the other hand, became structured earlier, unifying the active forces in Liège. Witnesses to this are the two categories which presided over the professionalisation and institutionalisation of cinematographic production, in other words the cinema workshops and the production companies properly speaking. Amongst the former there emerged first of all Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Collectif Dérives, whose strongly socially marked initiatives endeavoured to place in perspective the history of the workers’ movement, then ‘Caméra Enfants Admis,’ who introduced thousands of young people to animated cinema whilst educating them in responsible citizenship, and finally Wallonie Image Production (WIP), run by Christine Pireaux and solidly grounded in a public service mission: offering support above all to creative documentary projects. As far as the production companies go, the one called ‘Les films de La Drève’ has to be mentioned, created in the 1970s by the Vervier based Jean-Jacques Andrien, author of the feature film Le Grand Paysage d'Alexis Droeven (1981). The year 1984 saw the foundation of Films de la Passerelle: here were produced resolutely engaged works, or in any case films turned towards socio-economic and political issues – such as those which fed Thierry Michel’s Hiver 60. And before the Dardenne brothers formed their new production company Les films du Fleuve in 1994, a prelude to La Promesse (1996), Jean-Claude Riga launched Latitudes Productions in the second half of the 1980s, a company which would be rewarded by the success of the documentary Ronde de nuit (1984).