'Hand to Body. History(ies) of photography' at the Center Pompidou

From September 6, 2023 to March 25, 2024, the Center Pompidou presents Corps à Corps. Histoire(s) de la photographie, an exhibition that brings together more than 500 photographs and documents made by around 120 historical and contemporary photographers and that offers an unprecedented look at the photographic representations of the human being in the 20th and 21st centuries.

With the meeting of two exceptional photographic collections – the public one of the National Museum of Modern Art, Center Pompidou, and the private one of the French collector Marin Karmitz –, the exhibition Corps à corps offers a unique look at photographic representations of the human figure, in the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition goes beyond the classic study categories such as the portrait, the self-portrait, the nude or even the so-called humanist photography, while revealing peculiarities, photographic ways of seeing and makes visible the correspondences between artists. Corps à corps will allow us to discover their common obsessions, in their way of learning the subject, as in their stylistic approach.

These comparisons can shed light on a particular practice, at a specific moment in history, or, on the contrary, show the proximity of distant visions in time. The exhibited images also raise questions about the photographer's responsibility: how does photography participate in the birth of identities and their visibility? How does he explain the individualities, the relationship with the other? The collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, Center Pompidou, and the Marin Karmitz collection, differentiated by their origin, their nature and their purpose, appear here complementary. The public gaze and the private gaze dialogue and build new narratives. Together, they offer a reflection on the same idea of collection. How is a collection built, and what is the part of subjectivity in its constitution? How to convey it to the public?