Epreuves de la matière La photographie contemporaine et ses métamorphoses

Underpinned by multiple visual explorations, questions relating to material permeate all fields of photography, from the creative process to presentation of the resulting images. Drawing on the BnF’s extensive collection of contemporary photographs, the exhibition reveals photographic material’s capacities for metamorphosis, along with its possible disappearance. A sensory, incarnate history of photography is presented through unique works by almost two hundred French and foreign photographers.

Divided into four major parts, the exhibition explores the image-material’s possible states in photography, analogue and digital alike.

The first part, “Tangible image, incarnate material”, shows how photographers such as William Eggleston, Ann Mandelbaum and Denis Brihat transform photographed material by, for example, utilising blur, close-up and variations of scale. Others, such as Andreas Müller-Pohle, Philippe Gronon and Isabelle Le Minh, concentrate on analysing all the textures of a photograph’s components: silver grain, gelatine, pixels, paper, etc.


With “Labile image, experimented material”, the exhibition goes on to evoke materiality in the light of explorations carried out in the “kitchen”, from laboratory to computer menu: analogical experiments on emulsions (Pierre Cordier’s chemigrams and Marina Bério’s gum bichromate process mixed with her own blood) and on photographic mediums (Ellen Carey’s folded photograms, Patrick Bailly-Maître- Grand’s daguerreotypes and Almudena Romero’s prints on plants) are presented in comparison with digital works by Thomas Ruff (“Substrates” series, created by superimposition of several images gleaned from the internet ) and Lauren Moffatt (repurposing of photogrammetry in the “Compost” series).


“Hybrid image, metamorphosed material” highlights practices in which photography hybridises with other artistic expressions (Anne-Lise Broyer and Paolo Gioli) or, through its own resources, succeeds in suggesting effects of pictorial, graphic or sculptural materials (Valérie Belin, Jean-Luc Tartarin and Laurent Millet). The fourth and final part, “ Precarious image, weakened material”, presents works that examine photography subjected to the passage of time and factors that may lead to its gradual erasure (work on the photographic archives of Eric Rondepierre, Joan Fontcuberta, Hideyuki Ishibashi, Lisa Sartorio, Oscar Muñoz, etc.) along with ephemeral materialisations that give rise to evanescent images (Michael Snow’s holograms) or spectral, latent images (Rosella Bellusci, Smith, Vittoria Gerardi and Alain Fleischer).


Although, in the works presented, the medium appears to be more important than the subject, the two are closely related nonetheless, and despite the diversity of practices, a good many photographers prioritise depictions evocative of landscape, the body and nature. Delivering a rich visual grammar in which bridges are built between early photographic processes and contemporary technologies, these artists also give thought to the complex relationships between photography, society, nature and technology, indicative of their commitment to an ecology of the image.