Search
COLLECTION
150 photographs from the Bachelot collection
07.10.2022 - 26.02.2023
- Artists
- Diane Arbus
- Édouard Boubat
- Mohamed Bourouissa
- Marcel Bovis
- Brassaï
- Gilles Caron
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Philippe Chancel
- Stéphane Couturier
- Bruce Davidson
- Luc Delahaye
- Robert Doisneau
- Gilles Ehrmann
- Véronique Ellena
- Mitch Epstein
- Louis Faurer
- Andreas Feiniger
- Robert Frank
- Paul Fusco
- Luigi Ghirri
- Mario Giacomelli
- Nan Goldin
- Paul Graham
- Harry Gruyaert
- Dave Heath
- Laura Henno
- Joy Judith Ross
- Nadav Kander
- Chris Killip
- François Kollar
- Josef Koudelka
- Dorothea Lange
- Saul Leiter
- Christian Lemaire
- Leon Levinstein
- Helen Levitt
- Jacques Louis René Carlu
- Vivian Maier
- Susan Meiselas
- Joel Meyerowitz
- Janine Niepce
- Willy Ronis
- Arthur S. Siegel
- Mike Smith
- Eugene Smith
- Paul Strand
- Sabine Weiss
- Curator
- Sam Stourdzé
This autumn, the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici presents the COLLECTION exhibition, featuring the photography collection of Florence and Damien Bachelot.
The exhibition features an exceptional collection of nearly 150 photographs spanning a century of photographic history, in the intimacy of the human condition. From Brassaï to Sabine Weiss, and from Diane Arbus to Mitch Epstein, it offers an in-depth reading of the history of photography, focusing on the human being and his relationship with his environment, where the bustle of the city rubs shoulders with the solitary poetry of the portrait.
The exhibition offers a double perspective: that of collectors Florence and Damien Bachelot, through 20 years of coherent acquisitions that compose a personal narrative, and that of curator Sam Stourdzé, through a selection of prints in which the photographer’s eye acts as a seismograph of historical events and intimate narratives.
The exhibition moves between the two great transatlantic traditions: from early 20th-century French humanist photography to American street photography. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau and Willy Ronis meet Dave Heath, Helen Levitt and Robert Frank.
An extraordinary collection of almost 40 vintage prints by Saul Leiter, with the transition to color, testifies to a shift towards the second half of the century and a reversal of photographic influences. American counterculture and the reversals of modernist utopia take center stage.
Finally, the exhibition explores the beginnings of modern reportage with Gilles Caron, through to the documentary portraits of contemporary photographers such as Luc Delahaye, Mohamed Bourouissa, Véronique Ellena and Laura Henno. The ancient cistern of Villa Medici will host a focus on Laura Henno’s work, combining photography and film.
Between contrasts and correspondences, the exhibition of the Bachelot collection at Villa Medici highlights a history of photographic influences and examines the way in which the portrait and the body frame the city, carving out the urban and everyday spaces where the human figure always provides the scale. It is also a portrait of a couple of collectors, and of an eye that allows the vintage and the contemporary to rub shoulders.
The historical and aesthetic texts accompanying the exhibition are written by photography historian Michel Poivert.
The exhibition catalog is published in a bilingual French and Italian version by Maison CF (éditions Clémentine de la Féronnière).
It offers a panorama of the works featured in the exhibition “COLLECTION: 150 photographs from the Bachelot collection“with previously unpublished texts by photography historian Michel Poivert and a cross-interview between Florence and Damien Bachelot and Sam Stourdzé, conducted by Michel Poivert.
The book is available from the Villa Medici boutique.
Number of pages: 128
ISBN: 9791096575282
Price incl. VAT: € 39.00
Bilingual French-Italian version
La collection Bachelot
The Florence and Damien Bachelot collection comprises almost 1,000 photographs, making it one of the largest private collections of prints in France. The common thread running through the collection is the search for exceptional pieces, due to their quality or history (rare prints, vintages, limited editions, etc.).
This collection, which focuses on humanist, documentary and social photography from the early 20th century to the present day, includes some forty exceptional prints by Saul Leiter. For Florence and Damien Bachelot, collecting is a commitment to the photographic medium in all its materiality and singularity, as well as a way of supporting today’s young photographers, particularly those from France.
Created in the early 2000s by four partners – Damien Bachelot, Claude Garnier, Jean-Pascal Mahieu and Yves Hervieu-Causse – as a corporate collection for the Aforge group, the photographic collection became an exclusively family project when it was bought out in 2009 by Damien and Florence Bachelot. The collection has been built up and expanded with the support of specialists who have accompanied Florence and Damien Bachelot in their approach, including exhibition curator Sam Stourdzé and American gallery owner Howard Greenberg. The works in the collection are regularly the subject of loans or dedicated exhibitions, as well as publications, notably by Maison CF (éditions Clémentine de la Féronnière). In 2023, the Musée Réattu in Arles will host an exhibition devoted to portraits in the Bachelot collection, as part of the Rencontres de la photographie.
Sam Stourdzé
Sam Stourdzé is a curator specializing in contemporary images and the relationship between art, photography and cinema. Since 2020, he has been Director of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, of which he is a former fellow (2007, cinema section). Previously, he was director of the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, Switzerland (2010 – 2014) and of the Rencontres d’Arles (2014 – 2020).
The French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici would like to thank the patrons and partners who support its artistic program:
Main sponsor
AMUNDI
Patrons
LOUIS ROEDERER FOUNDATION
GROUPAMA ASSICURAZIONI
AIR FRANCE
CULINARIES
Media partners
POLKA
INSIDE ART
