This exhibition is a project that will evolve over several years, like collections or museums themselves that are constantly changing depending on the individuals involved and the varying historical contexts. For the next five years, ten themes, each composed of ten images, will be simultaneously shown to the public. Since the fragile material nature of photography makes it necessary to change them regularly, five themes will be renewed every five months until all 60 subjects have been shown. The exhibition reveals a particular vision of photography linked to the specific institutional history of Photo Elysée. Analyzing and selecting works are subjective actions, often individual, motivated by the desire for knowledge and a better understanding of the world. It therefore presents only one possible aspect of the exploration of the collections. It is, above all, the fruit of teamwork, notably through texts written by people from different horizons associated with the museum. Most especially, it bears witness to a diversified and dynamic photography, found in many social use contexts, notably artistic.
Throughout its history, photographic technologies and the resulting social practices have repeatedly and effortlessly crossed disciplinary boundaries in the arts, sciences, politics and society. Given the breadth of the collections, our project has neither the ambition to be exhaustive, nor the will to propose a definitive vision of the history of photography. Instead, it provides tools for a playful probing of the collections and to give form to the immense thematic diversity they cover.
