Exhibition guide

On the occasion of the Bicentenary of the birth of photography, LE BAL is dedicating an exhibition to a collection for the first time: that of the Wilson Center for Photography, put together by Michael and Jane Wilson. Through this rare set of 120 prints, most of them vintage, the exhibition explores the sometimes murky, sometimes luminous, always unstable bond that unites the person who photographs and the person who is photographed.

Visit details

  • Dates: From Friday June 19, 2026 to Sunday January 3, 2027:
  • Venue: Le BAL, 6, impasse de la Défense, Paris
  • Price: payant
  • Audience: All audiences
  • Source: Event page

About the exhibition

Fugitive encounter, premeditated encounter: from candid capture to collaborative staging, the exhibition questions the relationship that forms, at the moment of taking the photo, between the photographer and his subject. What does the image reveal about the respective positions of these two bodies? Of their complicity, of their face-to-face encounter, of the silent pact sealed by the gaze of one on the appearance of the other?

The exhibition highlights iconic works and others less known, from the 1920s to the present day, in a sensitive journey which favors the rebounds, the affinities and the contaminations between the images.

“Always, at the center of each photo, this little struggle of conscience between who reveals and who is revealed, of which the photographic portrait has always been the privileged scene. »

  • Bertrand Schefer

With:

Lola Álvarez Bravo, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Bill Brandt, Josef Breitenbach, Horace Bristol, Esther Bubley, Elinor Carucci, Mark Cohen, John Coplans, Gregory Crewdson, Imogen Cunningham, Bruce Davidson, Rineke Dijkstra, Walker Evans, Leonard Freed, Lee Friedlander, David Goldblatt, John Gutmann, Birney Imes, Graciela Iturbide, Sarah Jones, André Kertész, Chris Killip, Dorothea Lange, Sergio Larraín, Richard Learoyd, Danny Lyon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Roger Mayne, Susan Meiselas, Tina Modotti, Daidō Moriyama, Nicholas Nixon, Alexander Rodchenko, August Sander, Tomoko Sawada, Chris Shaw, Aaron Siskind, Graham Smith, Louis Stettner, Issei Suda, Yutaka Takanashi, Shoji Ueda, Weegee, Francesca Woodman.