FLINT, MICH.- The Flint Institute of Arts presents French Twist: Masterworks of Photography from Atget to Man Ray from September 12 – November 8, 2015. Featuring 100 vintage prints from the golden age of French photography and celebrating the variety and inventiveness of native and immigrant photographers working in France in the early 20th century. Between the two world wars, Paris saw a fervor of change and the city became a creative epicenter for artistic exploration, attracting international avant-garde artists—including both male and female photographers.

Some used photography to document the old ways of life; others, to celebrate the new. Some saw themselves as part of a movement, be it Surrealism, Modernism, or the new reportage, while others were dedicated loners who blazed their own path. Many photographers in this exhibition settled in France for life, while some fled the Nazis and brought their Paris-trained sensibilities and influence to America.

The exhibition encompasses Eugène Atget's lyrical views of Paris streets and gardens, Man Ray's Surrealist experiments, and Henri Cartier-Bresson's pioneering photojournalism. It also features works by avant-garde female artist Ilse Bing, photographer of Paris at night Brassaï, child prodigy Jacques-Henri Lartigue, and street photographer Lisette Model.

The Flint Institute of Arts is the second largest art museum in the State of Michigan and one of the largest museum art schools in the nation. Each year, more than 160,000 people visit the FIA’s galleries (free of charge) and participate in FIA programs and services.

For more than 85 years, the FIA has been responsible for acquiring, protecting and presenting a collection of art and artifacts spanning continents and 5,000 years. The world renowned collection, which now exceeds 8,000 objects, is significant for its depth of important European and American paintings and sculptures, 15th century to the present, and its extensive holdings of decorative and applied arts including important ethnographic study collections dating back five millennia.