An Alternative History of Photography

Jonathan Adagogo Green, Dernière photo du Chef Henry Long John. Derrière lui se tient son successeur, Nigeria, 1895 © Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac

The result of years of research, the exhibition Photographs: An Early Album of the World (1842–1911) at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris, tells the story of how photography spread to non-European countries. It’s a world tour in 300 images by 101 photographers.

Find Your Ideal Photo Kit with MPB

Street @ihoworth

True to its eco-responsible philosophy, MPB offers its expertise to help you make the best choice in used cameras, while providing a safe platform for buying, selling, and trading photo equipment.

L’Inaperçu: Photography à la Carte

Tucked into a street corner in the Beaubourg district, just a five-minute walk from the Centre Pompidou, l’Inaperçu lives up to its name: this photography bookshop, café, and restaurant rolled into one is unlike any place you’ve ever seen.

An Ode to Intimate Photographs

Nan Goldin

The International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York explores the feeling of love through fifteen intimate stories spanning the 1950s to the present. 

A Lower East Side Time Capsule

Balloons on Delancey Street, 1986. From the series Loisaida Street Work-1984 to 1990. Photographs from New York's Lower East Side.

1984. Lower East Side, New York. Almost 40 years later, Tria Govan’s work is published as Tria Giovan: Loisaida New York Street Work 1984 -1990.

Pierre Molinier: The Body at Work

Pierre Molinier, "Les jambes de la poupée", 1960 - 1976 @Adagp, Paris, 2023. Collection Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MECA

Pierre Molinier, a unique figure in the history of art, is the subject of an extensive exhibition that juxtaposes 130 of his works with some hundred pieces by fifty-three artists. Held at Frac-MÉCA Nouvelle-Aquitaine in Bordeaux, the exhibition foregrounds the art center’s own collection.

ImageSingulières: A Human Festival

Oui-Oui team - Soapbox race. Gourgé (Deux-Sèvres), September 4, 2022 © Frédéric Stucin

This year, the Sète-based festival, France, celebrates its fifteenth anniversary with eight exhibitions devoted, as ever, to documentary photography. A beautiful festival of the image that knows how to take the pulse of the world.

AI-Generated Images: A Visual Revolution

© image generated by Midjourney

Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion: artificial-intelligence software generating images has been perfected and democratized, leading to a real revolution in the visual industry. Faced with the devouring ambitions of these new technologies, image professionals are trying to assert their rights and raise awareness about the magnitude of the financial, but also ethical, challenges presented by AI.

In the Sweat of Their Brow

© À la sueur de leur front — Victorine Alisse

For several years, the French photographer Victorine Alisse has shared her daily life with farmers and fishermen of France. Here she tells the story of the last chapter in her series On avait tous un paysan dans la famille [We’ve All Had a Farmer in the Family].

Jessica Lange: Alone in the City

© Jessica Lange

In her new book “Dérive,” the legendary American actress bears witness to a city stricken with grief, confusion, and loss during the pandemic.

The Many Lives of Hannibal Volkoff 

Alice smoking on the ground, 2010

For more than a decade, Hannibal Volkoff has been photographing his daily life and the feverish nights of an uninhibited underground. The artist and now gallery owner bears witness to, and lives in, a world where gentleness confronts harsh reality.

Following the Legendary White Horses in Camargue

© Tony Bonanno

The Camargue Horse is often called “the Horse of the Sea”. It has inhabited this region in South of France for thousands of years, along with Pink Flamingos, Grey Herons, black bulls, and the many sounds of nature.

Documentary Photography Revolution Is On

Life of Steen19 © Ingeborg Everaerd

Since 2015, the Salon Photo Doc in Paris (May 12–14) has been putting new documentary photography in the spotlight. This is an opportunity to look at how the genre has evolved and discover new forms of expression in what has long been considered the most noble of the photographic genres.

Lars Tunbjörk: A View From the Side

L'été à Rättvik, 1988, from Landet Utom Sig series (1993) © Lars Tunbjörk

In the deadpan yet piercing rendition of the everyday, Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk’s images depict the commonplace in a most un-commonplace way. And though Lars is the most common male name in Sweden, his images are anything but common.

Valérie Belin: Pop & Pep

Série « Black-Eyed Susan I », 2010 Calendula (Marigold) / « Black- Eyed Susan I » series, 2010 Calendula (Marigold). Extrait de Valérie Belin, L’incertaine beauté du monde (Atelier EXB / MUba, Tourcoing, 2023) © Valérie Belin

In a subtle monograph coupled with a retrospective in Tourcoing, France, the artist bends the medium of photography at whim.

Bernard Plossu’s Time Regained

San Luis Obispo, Californie, 1979 © Bernard Plossu, Courtesy Galerie Camera Obscura / Galerie du Jour agnès b.

At 78, French photographer Bernard Plossu reveals previously unpublished photographs in an exhibition entitled “The American Years: Unpublished photographs 1966–1985” at Galerie du Jour Agnès b, in Paris. While his cult book Le Voyage Mexicain is being reissued by Contrejour, and at least three others are in the works, something has happened. Something that made him inconsolable.

Lionel Kazan: An Ode to Femininity and Elegance

Le mannequin islandais Gudrun Bjarnadottir-Bergese (Miss International 1963). Publication non identifiée, vers 1965 © Lionel Kazan

Lionel Kazan is one of those photographers who stayed out of the limelight and helped shape the image of fashion and style in major magazines in the mid-twentieth century. Following the publication of a coffee-table book devoted to his work, the photographer’s daughter Alexandra Kazan continues to pay tribute to her father and celebrate his artistic talent with an exhibition in Nice, France.

The Women on Ward 81

© Mary Ellen Mark, avec l'aimable autorisation de la Fondation Mary Ellen Mark

In 1976 photographer Mary Ellen Mark and writer Karen Folger Jacobs set out to document the women who were living in the locked ward at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem. Over the course of 5 weeks while living and working in the hospital, the two women interviewed and photographed the women on Ward 81.

The Everyday Bronx

Founded in 2014, Everyday Bronx is an Instagram account that looks to rewrite the narrative of the Bronx, telling the complex stories of the often-overlooked borough one photo at a time. The Bronx Documentary Center, in New York, working with photographer and curator Rhynna M. Santos, brings together prints and video displays from the project to show the importance of this online archive of Bronx life.

Ukrainian Photographer Wins World Press Photo Award

© Evgeniy Maloletka, Associated Press, World Press Photo of the Year

Each year, the World Press Photo contest rewards the most outstanding photos of the year. On Thursday, April 20, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka received the World Press Photo of the Year award for his picture of the besieged maternity ward of Mariupol, in Ukraine.

Best Regards, Willy Rizzo

Willy Rizzo with his Zeiss Sonnar 180 lens ©StudioWillyRizzo

They are heirs to a time in suspension, and their images continue to enrich the world history of photography and our own impatient eyes. Blind shares the memories of some magical encounters with these virtuosos of the camera, soloists in black & white or in color, artists faithful to gelatin silver photography or bewitched by digital technologies. Today: Willy Rizzo and his constellation of stars.

A Photographic Celebration of Black Life

New York, NY 1960s. © Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House

In Black Archives, Renata Cherlise brings together vernacular photographs made between the 1930s and the 1990s to celebrate Black America and preserve Black American history.

Katinka Bock: Sculpting the Moment

Katinka Bock, Building Bridges, 2021

Through April 29, 2023, “Der Sonnenstich”, the first exhibition of Katinka Bock’s photographic work, is on view at the Pernod Ricard Foundation in Paris.

This Is Britain: The Ship is Sinking

Little Chef in Rain, St. Neots, Cambridgeshire, May 1982. © Paul Graham, courtesy Pace Gallery

The idea behind “This is Britain: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s” is simple. It shows the work of photographers “who recorded ways of life that were under threat or disappearing.” It shows the influence of car culture, migration, de-industralisation, and banking deregulation  on a nation that found itself in various pockets of decline in […]

In the Eyes of Anthony Barboza

Questlove, New York, New York, 2011 © Anthony Barboza

The new book “Eye Dreaming” brings together a vivid tapestry of works from a singular career that transformed the landscape of photography.

Barbara Iweins: Feeling at Home

Chambre de Pieter © Barbara Iweins

To overcome her grief, Barbara Iweins chose to photograph it. Strangely, it is by adopting a documentary approach that she succeeds in touching us and freeing herself from a painful past.

Traveling to Space From Your Backyard

© Andrew Rovenko

“The Rocketgirl Chronicles”, by Andrew Rovenko, is a heartwarming personal project that follows the adventures of one little astronaut. As the photographer’s daughter keeps exploring the neighborhood, the child’s curiosity and imagination is able to transform even the most mundane of surroundings into otherworldly and often haunting scenes.

Glamour as Resistance

Shannon Dupree

With flowers, wigs and sequins, Harry James Hanson and Devin Antheus pay a colorful tribute to the legends of drag.

The People of the South Bronx 

Artworks by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres, 42nd Street Art Project with Creative Time, 1993.

For their first major survey since 1991, artists John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres team up, offering an intimate look at their community. “Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres” is on view through April 30, 2023, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York.

The Rise of Wildlife Photography

Flamants célestes par Junji Takasago, Gagnant,Japon, Art naturel. Situé dans les Andes, le Salar d'Uyuni est la plus grande étendue de sel au monde. C'est aussi l'une des plus grandes mines de lithium de Bolivie, ce qui menace l'avenir de ces flamants. Le lithium est utilisé dans les batteries des téléphones et des ordinateurs portables. © Junji Takasago, Wildlife Photographer of the Year / Wildlife Photographer of the Year est développé et produit par le Natural History Museum, Londres

Long denigrated and considered to be an inferior genre of only illustrative value, wildlife photography had been a wild card in the history of photography. Today, the discipline, addressing artistic, technical, and ethical issues, has been made more accessible through societal and technological developments and has seen a rise in its popularity and reputation.

Long Live Photography at Art Paris!

Thibault Brunet, sans titre #6, série 3600 secondes de lumière, 2022 tirage jet d’encre sur papier epson ultra smooth contre­col­lage sur Dibond, enca­dre­ment, verre anti­re­flet pièce unique - 100 x 100 cm

A major springtime event in modern and contemporary art, Art Paris celebrates its 25th anniversary at the Grand Palais Éphémère from March 30 to April 2, 2023. Like its predecessors, this anniversary edition throws photography into limelight among the 900 artists on view. A sample to whet your appetite.

Elliott Erwitt: An Explosion of Color

Elliott Erwitt en réflexion, Tropicana Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, États-Unis, 1957 © Elliott Erwitt / Magnum Photos

The Maillol Museum in Paris devotes a stunning retrospective to the iconic American photographer Elliott Erwitt. The exhibition takes us through a full career made up of moments of fun and turning points in history.

Madame d’Ora: The Woman Explorer

d'Ora, Hat by Krieser, 1910 © Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

An exhibition dedicated to Madame d’Ora at the Pavillon Populaire in Montpellier retraces the extraordinary career of this pioneering portrait photographer active in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century. On view until April 16, 2023.