Stéphane COUTURIER

Exhibition from October 7, 2022 to January 15, 2023
Curator: Sam Stoudzé

This fall, the Académie de France à Rome - Villa Médicis presents the exhibition COLLECTION, which features the photography collection of Florence and Damien Bachelot.

 

The exhibition features an exceptional collection of nearly 150 photographs covering a century of the history of the image, in the intimacy of the human condition. From Brassaï to Sabine Weiss and from Diane Arbus to Mitch Epstein, the exhibition offers an in-depth reading of the history of photography, focusing on the human being and his or her relationship to the environment, where the effervescence of the city rubs shoulders with the solitary poetry of the portrait.

The exhibition offers a double perspective: that of the collectors Florence and Damien Bachelot through 20 years of coherent acquisitions that compose a personal narrative, and that of the curator Sam Stourdzé through a selection of prints where the photographer's eye acts as a seismograph of historical events and intimate narratives.

The exhibition moves between the two great transatlantic traditions: from the French humanist photography of the early 20th century to American street photography. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau and Willy Ronis meet Dave Heath, Helen Levitt and Robert Frank.

An extraordinary group of nearly 40 vintage prints by Saul Leiter testifies, with the transition to color, to a shift to the second half of the century and a reversal of photographic influences. The American counterculture and the setbacks of the modernist utopia occupy the center of the image.

Finally, the exhibition explores the beginnings of modern reportage with Gilles Caron, to the documentary portraits of contemporary photographers such as Luc Delahaye, Mohamed Bourouissa, Véronique Ellena and Laura Henno. The ancient cistern of the Villa Medici will host a focus on the work of Laura Henno, between photographs and films.

Between contrasts and correspondences, the exhibition of the Bachelot collection at Villa Medici highlights a history of photographic influences and examines the way in which the portrait and the body frame the city, cutting out the urban and everyday spaces where the human figure always provides the scale. It is also the portrait of a couple of collectors that takes shape and of a look that allows the vintage and the contemporary to meet.

The texts that accompany the exhibition in a historical and aesthetic perspective are signed by Michel Poivert, historian of photography.

Artists present in the exhibition :

Diane Arbus, Édouard Boubat, Mohamed Bourouissa, Marcel Bovis, Brassaï, Gilles Caron, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philippe Chancel, Stéphane Couturier, Bruce Davidson, Luc Delahaye, Robert Doisneau, Gilles Ehrmann, Véronique Ellena, Mitch Epstein, Louis Faurer, Andreas Feiniger, Robert Frank, Paul Fusco, Luigi Ghirri, Mario Giacomelli, Nan Goldin, Paul Graham, Harry Gruyaert, Dave Heath, Laura Henno, René Jacques, Ray K. Metzker, Nadav Kander, Chris Killip, François Kollar, Josef Koudelka, Dorothea Lange, Saul Leiter, Christian Lemaire, Leon Levinstein, Helen Levitt, Vivian Maier, Susan Meiselas, Joel Meyerowitz, Janine Niepce, Willy Ronis, Joy Judith Ross, Arthur S. Siegel, Eugene Smith, Mike Smith, Paul Strand, Sabine Weiss

October 7, 2022