With this unprecedented exhibition, presented as part of photography’s bicentenary, come and delve into the Louvre’s photographic history, from the earliest photographs to the most contemporary techniques!
The Louvre opened a few decades before the birth of photography. Combining the real and the imaginary and offering a journey through time and space, the museum was a fertile cradle of inspiration for the first photographers. The Louvre Photo exhibition focuses on the Louvre as a model, a subject, a source of inspiration, and an object of reappropriation. Through more than 300 photographs—including images of the Louvre, its works, exhibition rooms, and open spaces, as well as famous and anonymous visitors, museum staff, hidden places, and behind the scenes—Louvre Photo invites discovery and revelation, bringing together fresh, detached perspectives on the museum, the institution, and its collections, sometimes not without humor or a sense of the offbeat. Louvre Photo covers the long period from the invention of photography to the present day, from the first photographers to those now invited by the museum, such as Robert Polidori, who was invited recently. This period was marked by major historical events such as the Commune, World War I and World War II, and the diplomatic and tourism boom of the Trente Glorieuses. It was also punctuated by key moments in the Louvre’s history, such as the transformation of the palace into a museum under the Second Empire, the evacuation and return of artworks during the two world wars, and the creation of the Grand Louvre in the 1980s. Grounded in a unity of place—defined by the walls of the building and the gates of its gardens, notably the Tuileries—Louvre Photo highlights the photographic collections held at the Louvre within its various collection departments, documentary collections that are still active, as well as collections from French institutions, notably the Archives nationales, the Médiathèque de la Photographie et du Patrimoine, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the musée d’Orsay, the musée Carnavalet, and the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris. The exhibition also showcases the commissions the Louvre has awarded to photographers since the early 2000s. Join a guided tour of the exhibition every Sunday at 11:30 a.m., and free, open-access “mini-tours” during the museum’s late-night openings (Wednesday and Friday) at 6:30 p.m., 7 p.m., 7:30 p.m., and 8 p.m.
Source: paris.fr — photo: © Agence Meurisse