Shooting Himself.(Jim Dine )(Critical Essay)

As a contemporary artist, Jim Dine has often incorporated other people's photography into his abstract works. But the 68-year-old American didn't pick up a camera himself and start shooting until he moved to Berlin in 1995--and once he did, he couldn't stop. The result is a voluminous collection of images, ranging from early-20th-century- style heliogravures to modern-day digital printings, a selection of which are on exhibition at the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris (through Sept. 14). They are among his most prized achievements. "I make photographs the way I make paintings," says Dine, "but the difference is, in photography, it's like lighting a fire every time."

Though photography makes up a small slice of Dine's vast oeuvre, the exhibit is a true retrospective of his career. Dine mostly photographs his own artwork or the subjects that he has portrayed in sculpture, painting and prints--including Venus de Milo, ravens and owls, hearts and skulls. There are still lifes of well-used tools in his Connecticut workshop, delightful digital self-portraits and intimate portraits of his sleeping wife, the American photographer Diana Michener. Most revealing and novel are Dine's shots of his poetry, scribbled in charcoal on walls like graffiti. To take in this show is to wander through Dine's life: his childhood obsessions, his loves, his dreams. It is a poignant and powerful exhibit that rightly celebrates one of modern art's most intriguing--and least hyped--talents.

When he arrived on the scene in the early 1960s, Dine was seen as a pioneer in the pop-art movement. But he didn't last long; once pop stagnated, Dine moved on. "Pop art had to do with the exterior world," he says. He was more interested, he adds, in "what was going on inside me." He explored his own personality, and from there developed themes. His love for handcrafting grew into a series of artworks incorporating hammers and saws. His obsession with owls and ravens came from a dream he once had. His childhood toy Pinocchio, worn and chipped, appears in some self-portraits as a red and yellow blur flying through the air.

Dine first dabbled in photography in the late 1970s, when Polaroid invited him to try out a new large-format camera at its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusettes. He produced a series of colorful, ...