Noir & Blanc: Une esthétique de la photographie

This exhibition brings together black-and-white masterpieces from the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s photographic collections.

Nadar, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Willy Ronis, Helmut Newton, Diane Arbus, Mario Giacomelli, Robert Frank, William Klein, Daido Moriyama, Valérie Belin...: the great names in French and international photography are brought together in an itinerary that presents some 300 prints and covers 150 years of blackand- white photography’s history, from its origins in the 19th century to contemporary creation.

Black and white is indissociable from the history of photography: its evolution, from the late 19th century to the present day, has confirmed its visual power. When use of colour became increasingly common in the 1970s, black and white reinvented itself as a recognised means of aesthetic expression focusing on graphic design and material. Black-and-white photography is less expensive and much simpler, of course, but its continuing endurance may above all be explained by the fact that it embodies the very essence of photography. It has a universal dimension, a timeless, even commemorative aspect to it, whereas colour only seems able to express the contemporary world.


The exhibition addresses the question of black and white from an aesthetic, formal and sensory viewpoint, with the emphasis on modes of image creation: visual and graphic effects of contrast, plays of shadow and light, rendering of materials in the full palette of black and white values. It focuses on photographers who concentrated or systematised their artistic creation in black and white, experimented with its possibilities and limitations, or made it the very subject of their photographic practice, such as Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Ralph Gibson, Mario Giacomelli and Valérie Belin.


Special attention has been paid to print quality, variety of techniques and photographic papers, and to black-and-white printing, as books and magazines were once the primary conduit of photographic creation to the public at large.

When colour photography processes were first marketed in 1907, to become widespread with chromogenic photographs in the second half of the 20th century, it could well have spelt the end of black and white. After all, ever since photography’s beginnings, reproduction of natural colours was what every inventor aspired to. Nevertheless, monochrome photography has stood its ground. In the middle of the century, whether due to technical or economic constraints, black-and-white photography became a real artistic choice, whereas colour was the province of amateurs, advertising and the press. Deemed elitist and backward-looking by some, its defenders see it as a guarantee of graphic and visual excellence, of poetry, symbolic distancing and universality: for them, it is what photography means.


The Bibliothèque nationale de France has always been and will remain one of the leading collectors of these black-and-white works. In the 1970s and 1980s, it lent its support to their creators in the face of the visual intoxication brought about by colour. These days, it supports the revival of monochrome practices, analogue photography in particular.

Black-and-white photography is one of the BnF’s collections’ fortes and the exhibition presents a wide variety of uses, subjects and signatures, providing a resolutely formal overview of these priceless works. Confronting eras, trends and techniques with each other, it addresses the works of 207 photographers from 37 countries from the viewpoint of their black-and-white expression, without regard for chronology. By presenting famous and lesser-known photographs side by side, it underscores their common stylistic features: contrasts, shadow and light effects, and renderings of materials through a palette of halftones. By its very profusion, it helps visitors perceive the full power and creative vibrancy of black and white.