C'est l'été !: Exposition collective

Summer occupies a singular place in the history of photography. A season of travel, leisure, and abundant light, it has profoundly shaped the production and circulation of photographic images since the twentieth century. With the rise of paid holidays, mass tourism, and portable cameras, summer became a privileged moment for photographic practice, giving rise to a vast visual repertoire of family albums, postcards, illustrated magazines, and amateur snapshots.

Over time, certain motifs have become enduring visual clichés: a beach, a figure immersed in water, bodies stretched out beneath the sun are now enough to evoke the season. Yet C‘est l‘été ! is not an attempt to catalogue these familiar images. Instead, the exhibition explores how artists have drawn upon themes associated with summer—water, light, travel, leisure, and conviviality—to renew their vision of the world and expand the expressive possibilities of the photographic medium.

Bringing together works from the 1930s to the present day, the exhibition features photographers from different generations and backgrounds, including Berenice Abbott, Thomas Boivin, Pierre Boucher, Albarrán Cabrera, Harry Callahan, Stéphane Couturier, Joël Denot, Jean-Claude Gautrand, Arlene Gottfried, Hervé Guibert, Ernst Haas, Frank Horvat, François Kollar, Rainer Leitzgen, Leon Levinstein, Vivian Maier, Ray K. Metzker, Jean Moral, Denis Roche, Philippe Séclier, André Steiner, Homer Sykes, Maurice Tabard and Sabine Weiss.