Le Havre, 1982 - Gilbert Fastenaekens © BnF - Department of Prints and Photography © Gilbert Fastenaekens

Nadar, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Willy Ronis, Helmut Newton, Diane Arbus, Mario Giacomelli, Robert Frank, William Klein, Daido Moriyama, Valérie Belin… The big names in French and international photography come together in a journey that spans 150 years history of black and white photography, from its origins in the XNUMXth century to contemporary creation.

“There is something mysterious about the black and white world which cannot be described and which is formidably alluring. Is it wrong to think that it touches our hearts all the more strongly as we live in an era where everything can be photographed in color? " Shoji ueda

150 years of black and white photography history

Following on from the major photography exhibitions organized since 2012 in the SudEst Gallery of the Grand Palais, the Noir & Blanc exhibition presents more than 300 prints representative of the exceptional collection of the Prints and Photography department of the BnF.

This presentation focuses on the twentieth century and the contemporary period without omitting a preamble to some photographs of the nineteenth century: thus the theme is treated over more than 150 years through the work of about 200 photographers of more than 30 nationalities.

Black and white, a constantly evolving technical and aesthetic bias

Gustave Le Gray, Grande Vague (detail), 1857, albumen paper after negative on a collodion glass plate
photo © BnF - Department of Prints and Photography

Black and white is an integral part of the history of photography: its developments, from the end of the 1970th century to today, have produced increasingly contrasting and sophisticated shades, revealing the plastic strength of this technique. While the use of color intensified during the XNUMXs, black and white was maintained and used as a means of assertive aesthetic expression emphasizing graphics and material.

Until the 1980s and 1990s, he dominated production in terms of number and hierarchy of value: like Walker Evans (1903-1975), many photographers then considered color photography to be a "vulgar" process, to reserve for mundane subjects and utilitarian uses. Beyond an economic and technical justification, the persistence of the use of black and white is explained by the fact that it ended up embodying, in common sense, the very essence of photography and " beautiful photograph ".

Black and white appears as the bearer of a universal, timeless and even memorial dimension, where color is the translation of the only contemporary world. The National Library of France (BnF) has always wanted to be a privileged conservatory of black and white photography just as it has encouraged the persistence of its practice and today its reappropriation by young authors in reaction against the whole. digital color.

Black and white in the photographic collections of the BnF

The exhibition tackles the question from an aesthetic, formal and sensitive angle, emphasizing the modes of creation of the monochrome image: plastic and graphic effects of contrasts, play of shadows and lights, rendering of materials in the entire palette of black and white values ​​through gray scales.

The choice focused on photographers who concentrated and systematized their artistic creation in black and white, experimented with its possibilities and limits, sometimes made it the very subject of their photography: Imogen Cunningham, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Florence Henri, Ralph Gibson, Mario Giacomelli, Valérie Belin for example.

Particular attention has been paid to the quality of the prints and to the variety of techniques and photographic papers (pigment prints, bichromate gums, baryta gelatin silver, etc.) and emphasis is placed on the theme of black and white printing, the books and magazines having long been the main vehicle for photographic creation.

The treasures of the BnF's photographic collections on display at the Grand Palais

The photographic collections of the Prints and Photography Department of the BnF, which now has some 6 million prints, are particularly representative of this history of black and white photography.

The BnF's collection of photographs, one of the richest in the world, now holds hundreds of thousands of prints, albums and portfolios of nearly 2000 5700th century photographers and more than XNUMX XNUMXth century photographers. and XNUMXst centuries, all trends and nationalities represented.

Le Havre, 1982 - Gilbert Fastenaekens © BnF - Department of Prints and Photography © Gilbert Fastenaekens

Pratical information

Black & White: an aesthetic of photography
12 November 2020 - 4 January 2021
Big palace - South East Gallery

Operation:

• Thursday, Sunday and Monday from 10 a.m. to 20 p.m.
• Wednesday night from 10 a.m. to 22 p.m.
• weekly closing on Tuesday
• closed on Friday 25 December
• closing at 18 p.m. on Thursdays December 24 and 31

Fees :

€ 10, TR € 7 (16-25 years old, job seekers and large families), free for children under 16, beneficiaries of minimum social benefits

access:

metro line 1 and 13: "Champs Elysées-Clemenceau" or line 9: "Franklin D. Roosevelt"

Information and reservations:

www.grandpalais.fr