PARIS.- To mark the bicentenary of the birth of photography, LE BAL is presenting, for the first time, an exhibition devoted to a single collection: that of Michael and Jane Wilson / The Wilson Centre for Photography. Through this rare ensemble of 120 prints, the exhibition explores the sometimes elusive, sometimes luminous, always shifting relationship between the one who photographs and the one who is photographed.
From fleeting encounters to carefully staged collaborations, from images caught in the moment to collaboratively constructed scenes, the exhibition examines the relationship that comes into being, at the moment the photograph is made, between the photographer and their subject. What does the image reveal about the respective positions of these two bodies? About their complicity, their face-to-face encounter, the silent pact sealed by the gaze of one upon the appearance of the other?
The exhibition brings together iconic works and lesser-known images, from the 1920s to the present day, in a sensitive journey shaped by visual echoes, affinities and unexpected correspondences between images.
“Always, at the centre of each photograph, there is this small struggle of consciousness between the one who reveals and the one who unveils themselves, a struggle for which the photographic portrait has always been the privileged stage.” – Bertrand Schefer
With: Lola Álvarez Bravo, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Bill Brandt, Josef Breitenbach, Horace Bristol, Esther Bubley, Elinor Carucci, Mark Cohen, John Coplans, Gregory Crewdson, Imogen Cunningham, Bruce Davidson, Rineke Dijkstra, Walker Evans, Leonard Freed, Lee Friedlander, David Goldblatt, John Gutmann, Birney Imes, Graciela Iturbide, Sarah Jones, André Kertész, Chris Killip, Dorothea Lange, Sergio Larraín, Richard Learoyd, Danny Lyon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Roger Mayne, Susan Meiselas, Tina Modotti, Daidō Moriyama, Nicholas Nixon, Alexander Rodchenko, August Sander, Tomoko Sawada, Chris Shaw, Aaron Siskind, Graham Smith, Louis Stettner, Issei Suda, Yutaka Takanashi, Shoji Ueda, Weegee, Francesca Woodman.
