Deauville (Calvados). After the exhibition devoted to Irving Penn in 2023, the Franciscans continued their partnership with the European Photography House (MEP) by inviting Sebastião Salgado, another big name in photography. The panorama of the work extends over almost forty years and is still based on the particularly rich collection owned by the Parisian establishment, relating in hollow the links constructed in the early 1980s between the Franco-Brazilian photographer and Jean-Luc Monterosso, founder and director of MEP until April 2018. “This support allowed the photographer to undertake some of his biggest projects in the 1990s, and in return Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Wanick Salgado [son épouse] supported the MEP, through an important donation in 2018, thus celebrating almost forty years of strong and friendly relations ”, Recalls in the Pascal Hoël catalog, responsible for the collections of the MEP and commissioner of this monograph which gives (re) reading the work on the mode of the intimate.
Sebastião Salgado, Mudman, Paya, Western Hautes-Terres province, Papua-Nouvelle-Guinée2008, MEP collection, Paris.
© Sebastião Salgado
The chronological journey of the 167 photographs selected on the 400 detainees in the fund is distinguished from other exhibitions by the format of the prints (30 x 40 cm for the most part), which contrasts with the now usual large prints with platinum-platinum exaggerating the grandiose character of the scenes or landscapes photographed. This homogenization of the format, coupled with the quality of the prints, has participated in this intimate vision of the main stages of work since the first reports made in Africa and France for the Sygma then Gamma press agencies in the years 1974-1978 to the major projects “Exodes” (1993-2000) and “Genesis” (2004-2012). This return to the origins shows the subjects (migration, wilderness and indigenous peoples) which mobilized the photographer economist by training and profession when he chose at 29 years to leave his functions at the International Coffee Organization, in London in 1973, to devote himself to photography.
Absent from this route: the last series, “Amazonia” (2013-2o19); It is not yet part of the MEP collection, but during the opening, Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Wanick Salgado have announced a donation of several photographs of this series on the Amazon forest and its inhabitants.
