To mark the bicentenary of photography, this exhibition pays tribute to the birth of an art form that has profoundly transformed our way of seeing the world. Since Nicéphore Niépce’s inaugural act—capturing the shimmering light—photography has continually opened new avenues of exploration, at the crossroads of science, perception, and imagination.
Created in 1955 by the Gens d’images association, the Niépce Prize is awarded annually to photographers with distinctive styles, contributing to the renewal of the medium. The exhibition brings together seven of its laureates—Mathieu Pernot, Marina Gadonneix, Grégoire Eloy, Julien Magre, Juliette Agnel, Anne-Lise Broyer, and Ed Alcock—and presents for each a selection of emblematic works, tracing artistic journeys marked by experimentation, continuity, and innovation.
Far from any imposed formal unity, the exhibition unfolds a constellation of perspectives where documentary observation, mental construction, and the sensory experience of the visible coexist. Landscapes imbued with memory, bodies inscribed in time, social structures laid bare: these are all territories where narratives and temporalities intertwine. Underlying this is the very status of photography—its capacity to document reality, to transform it, or even to resist it.
Presented as part of the Fuzhou × Niort festival, the exhibition is part of a long history of dialogue between France and China. In Fuzhou, where Paul Claudel once sought the words to describe light, it is now images that take up the mantle. Destined to travel to several Chinese cities, it extends Niépce's spirit of invention: to send images, and with them, imaginations, on a journey in a silent exchange where gazes meet.
Curator:
Philippe Guionie
Emilie Xu
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