They are assertions of beauty in the midst of decay, exhortations against banality and boredom, skewerings of the cruelties of officialdom.

Backus found a deep political and spiritual identification with the pochoiristes and their work. They clicked with his sense of humor and sense of history.

The streets of Paris have been the stage for repeated upheavals and revolutions, their walls a ready medium for direct communication: canvases for political posters, public galleries for artists, and surfaces for anarchistic, individual scribblings. A century of official prohibitions, "Defense d'Afficher," only fertilized a flowering tradition that has embraced everything from the fine art of muralists to the cabalistic lettering of graffiti writers. The pochoirs represented in this show began to appear in the early 1980s. Of the thousands of images created by dozens of pochoiristes, Backus focused on a relative handful.

Politically, pochoirs are descendants of the cultural manifestoes and situationist proclamations that marked the student and working class rebellions of the 1960s. Aesthetically, they are linked more to a French painterly tradition than to the illustrationist roots of the American graffiti that exploded on the world's walls in the 1970s. The figurative images of the pochoiristes to some extent represent a reaction to graffiti writing.

The consciseness of a stencil image and its capacity for rapid reproduction engenders a sense of freedom. But like generations of muralists and poster artists, the pochoiristes' work is not just about self-expression. Idiosyncratic, whimsically provocative, fond of double entendre and wordplay (those who sign their work use allusive pseudonyms), these artists seek interaction with passers-by through their images. They also interact with each other, sometimes working jointly on a wall, sometimes stealing up in the night to add an image that extends the context of another's work.

The peeling paint and evaporating plaster richly displayed in Backus' photographs are testimony to the ephemerality of the pochoirs. Most of the images photographed in this exhibition have disappeared, washed away by the city, covered over by others, damaged by taggers and the erosion of time. Even some of the walls that bore them have been demolished by the process of development and gentrification the pochoirs often opposed. This transitoriness appealed to Backus: pochoirs are marks of passing thoughts, free art that resists objectification and commodification.

His choice of media for printing his photographs has a mishieveous parallel to the pochoirs themselves. The large images are Iris prints, the smaller ones are laser reproductions. Both processes involve scanning the original color slide to create a digitized computer file, a kind of electronic stencil, that can be endlessly and relatively quickly reproduced. But the ink jet process that creates an Iris print of such painterly quality is still considered "fugitive." The Iris' water soluble inks are more sensitive to light and climate deterioration than photographic prints. Their longevity depends on ink and paper quality and storage conditions. Like the pochoirs, they are ephemeral, non-archival.

It was in the spirit of the pochoirs for Jules Backus to make beautiful images and then leave their fate to others. Certainly the spirit of his work, the hope and the soul it embodied, will leave its provocative imprint for future generations.

Salut! Jules.
Brian Drolet