Currently
October 21, 2026 - March 7, 2027
In the 1970s, Martine Franck (1938-2012) photographed feminist struggles, primarily in Paris. As a woman photographer, the attention she paid to the mobilizations of the Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF) shaped her outlook on the social world and would durably orient her body of work.
The question of images became central to feminist struggles in reaction to media representations within a dominant visual culture, one that objectified women’s bodies and could distort or discredit their demands. As a founding member of the Viva agency (1972), Martine Franck shared this vigilance toward images. Viva was conceived as a “refuge for photographers who understand the reach of the image, know its informative power, refuse the uses that could be made of it, and do not want to escape their social reality.”
This exhibition presents largely unpublished photographs that highlight the collective dimension of a feminist visual culture in the 1970s. This is expressed through the depiction of mobilizations, but also through the rise of the feminist press, which became a laboratory for these struggles. Periodicals also served as a privileged medium for the circulation of images.
From the 1980s onward, feminism became institutionalized, and Martine Franck produced the series “Des femmes et la création” [Women and Creation] and later “Des métiers et des femmes” [Jobs and Women] as part of public commissions. Her relationship to feminism gradually became more individual, but remained a defining force in her work.
Curator of the exhibition
Angèle Ferrere
PhD in History and Aesthetics of Photography
Recipient of the 2025 Martine Franck Curatorial Research Grant
Sponsor
The Martine Franck Curatorial Research Grant is supported by the Linklaters Foundation.
Currently
October 21, 2026 - March 7, 2027
Images live their own lives, independent of those who create them. It was in Nicaragua that Susan Meiselas came to understand this. In 1978, the photographer, just 30 years old, traveled there for the first time. She had previously studied visual education at Harvard University, published a highly acclaimed first book on striptease shows, and joined the Magnum Photos agency. In this Central American country, a popular uprising was transforming into a revolutionary war pitting the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) against the National Guard of the dictatorial regime of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle, backed by the United States. Throughout a year, she photographed daily life, street fighting, and the victory of the Revolution. In 1981, a first selection of these historically significant documents was published in a book simply titled Nicaragua, June 1978 – July 1979.
Following this publication, Susan Meiselas felt compelled to return to Nicaragua to speak with those who appeared in her images. Over the past four decades, she has returned there frequently, documenting how her photographs were being used — reproduced on various objects (T-shirts, stamps, matchboxes, etc.) or as murals, most often in celebration of the Revolution, but sometimes also to criticize or oppose it. She came to realize that her photographs had acquired a life of their own. Over time, a significant gap had emerged between what they documented and what they had come to symbolize in the collective imagination. Susan Meiselas’s images thus became the very site of a tension between History and Memory. It is precisely this dialectic that the exhibition at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, along with its accompanying publication by Atelier EXB, sets out to explore, through more than a hundred works, documents, and film clips.
Curator of the exhibition
Clément Chéroux
Director, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
Label
This project has been awarded the “Bicentennial of Photography” label by the French Ministry of Culture and is part of the official Bicentennial programme running from September 1st, 2026, to September 30, 2027.
