1965 saw the birth of the first public photography collection in a French art museum. That museum was the Musée Réattu, in Arles. Behind this bold avant-garde project were curator Jean-Maurice Rouquette and photographer Lucien Clergue. It would lead to the creation of the Rencontres Festival and the national photography school, but also to the full recognition of photography in France.
The summer 2015 exhibition celebrates how far we have come and offers a return to the origins and extraordinary story of this unique collection - a collection brought into existence by one photographer’s commitment and composed, from the first year, of 400 prints chosen by photographers who were in turn motivated by the challenge of the museum project.
At the Musée Réattu, this stance claimed a natural place for photographic art within the continuity of great historical painting - that of Jacques Réattu. Lucien Clergue went on to express this almost obsessional attachment in the double exposures he produced towards the end of his career. But first, let us return to the beginning.
On the 28 May 1965, the Musée Réattu presided over the the birth of a growing “8th art”, by offering wall space to the youthful collection. At that time, Arles discovered such artists as Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Peter Beard, Denis Brihat Jean Dieuzaide, Etienne Carjat, Robert Doisneau, Lucien Hervé, Izis, Germaine Krull, Thérèse Le Prat, Dora Maar, Man Ray, Emmanuel Sougez, Paul Strand, André Vigneau and Edward Weston.
In the decades that followed, they were joined by Brassaï, Edouard Boubat, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Denise Colomb, Imogen Cunningham, Mimmo Jodice, André Kertész, William Klein, Sarah Moon, Bernard Plossu, Willy Ronis, Jean-loup Sieff, André Villers among others.
Since then, 5000 prints have thrown light on the story of the photographic experience, with new acquisitions constantly being added, whether public commissions, loans or donated works. The growing development of this department has devoured the museum’s identity, prompting an appraisal of an art in mutation, through a selection of 250 photographs and a visit that asks the fundamental question: what does photography bring to art? From narrative photography to the frivolity of colour, the radical nature of the image imposes itself on us, evoking the future and the development of this collection.
Within this perspective, the visit closes with the photographer Olivier Roller who explores the embodiment of power, its endurance, its decadence and the way it is conveyed through portraits of men and women, past and present. Today he offers us a new variation on the theme, photographing the epidermis of tapestries held in places that symbolise power - economic, political and religious. In this respect, the ensemble of tapestries preserved in the Musée Réattu will be the subject of a photographic work to be shown in the chapel of the former Grand Priory of the Order of Malta. This installation is a tangible development towards a project planned for future years, when the Musée Réattu’s collection will be orientated around the relationship between image and textile.
