Opening / Friday February 15 th / 7 pm

A project museum Nicéphore Niépce and Pilotine Production.

Curators of the exhibition :
Floriane Doury (Pilotine Production)
Anne-Céline Borey et Emmanuelle Vieillard (museum Nicéphore Niépce)

Love...
Love: [noun]
An interest, very enthusiastic preference of a person for a category of things,  for a source of pleasure or satisfaction. Passionate and/ or sexual inclination of one  person toward another. If we go by this extract from the definition in the dictionary,  the term love can cover a broad range of feelings from romanticism to passionate  desire, from filial love to spiritual devotion. In French, the verb to love, aimer,  has multiple meanings.  In art history, love affairs are constantly celebrated. A winged, young adolescent,  a stolen kiss, lovers damned for eternity… From love at first sight to the pleasures  of the flesh, to the disappearance of feelings, all of the stages of love have inspired  literature and art.

Love and Photography

Through the photographic collections of the musée Nicéphore Niépce  in Chalon-sur-Saône and the perspective of contemporary photographers, this show  will provide the public with an eclectic take on love through the medium  of photography.The exhibition “Probability: 0.33” – A one in three chance of staying  together – is designed as a confrontation between everyday photography and the work  of contemporary photographers.
The life cycle of every love story is punctuated by both amateur and professional  photography. At the start of the 20th century, romantic pictures on postcards were used  by couples writing to each other at the start of their relationships. Today, the photo  posted on a dating website is the main criterion for choosing a potential partner.  In the life of a couple, the biggest photographic event is the wedding. The story  of the day is told in pictures by a professional photographer who is hired to chronicle  this major social occasion. The printed photographs are then kept in an album to be  flicked through or framed to decorate the family home. The photographs contribute  to making the union real.
  The exhibition also includes more unusual items such as the album made by a lover,  entirely dedicated to the subject of his desire and inspired by literature and poetry.  Or the collection of post-separation, mutilated family photographs where the father’s  face is carefully cut out of all the pictures.
 
Mac Adams, Delphine Balley, François Burgun, Natasha Caruana, Olivier Culmann,  Anouck Durand, Romain Mader, Virginie Marnat, Denis Roche, Jenny Rova,  Thomas Sauvin [Beijing Silvermine], Manon Weiser, and the humanist photographers  approach the subjects of love and living together as a couple. We get to see their vision  of the stages of a love affair with an uncertain ending
 
Lovers, joined in abandonment in public, become the very archetype of “lovers” in work by Doisneau and Ronis. Some love-struck photographers put their own relationships at the core of their work. They make their partner or their love story the central subject of their work. Others absorb the codes, customs and rites of love and propose an off-kilter, even corrosive take on coupledom, miles from the clichés of love with a capital L.
 

Lists of the pieces on show:

In introduction, the love celebrated by Doisneau, Ronis, Brassai, Izis, Capa...

> Chapter 1 : Somebody to love
Rechercher et rencontrer l’âme soeur

Postcards
early 20 th century
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

BIEM editions
Postcards records
1960s
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

Manon Weiser
Tinder Man,
the greatest hero of them all
2014
Courtesy of the artist

> Chapter 2 : Let’s stay together
Moi, je te prends toi ...

Virginie Marnat
Cocottes
2002
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

Various studios
Wedding portraits
1900 to 2000
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

Thomas Sauvin
[Beijing Silvermine]
Until Death Do Us Part
2015
Courtesy of the artist

> Chapter 3 : Somewhere only we know
Ma vie de couple

Anouck Durand
How I left
2012
Courtesy of the artist

Jenny Rova
Älskling,
A self-portrait through the eyes of my lovers
2017
Courtesy of the artist

Denis Roche
Proof of time (extracts)
1970s to 2000s
Prints made in the laboratory
of the musée Nicéphore Niépce in 2000
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

Anonymous amateur
The album of Robert and Andrée
1960s
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

Mac Adams
The liminal body,
The threshold between remembering and forgetting
2018
A first-time installation using extracts
from the Robert and Andrée album
Courtesy of the artist

> Chapter 4 : Jealous guy
Amour vache et rupture

Natasha Caruana
Divorce Index
video HD, 5.21 minutes
2017

Curtain of Broken Dreams
2017
Courtesy of the artist
This piece was originally commissioned
by the Open Data Institute as part of the Data
as Culture programme, supported by the National
Lottery and the Arts Council England.

Olivier Culmann
Relics, Antoine’s love life
2002
Courtesy of the artist

Amateur anonyme
Missing heads
1950s
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

Jenny Rova
I would also like to be – a work on jealousy
2015
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

François Burgun
Cakes
2010
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

> Chapter 5 : Nothing else matter
À la vie, à l‘amour, à la mort

Natasha Caruana
Love Bomb
2014
Courtesy of the artist

Photo-montages for the newspaper
Le Petit Parisien
1920s -1930s
Collection of the musée Nicéphore Niépce

Delphine Balley
True Stories
2006
Courtesy of the artist