EN - Image(s) d’une collection Tome II

Nearly fifteen years after the publication of the first volume of the catalogue of the Musée de la Photographie’s collection, a second edition has now been published. In the intervening years, through acquisitions, donations and deposits, the collection has grown to over one and a half million negatives and 100,000 positive prints.

This second volume follows on from the first, highlighting the key works in the collection and the way in which it was built up. The collection is enriched by the co-production of the Museum’s temporary exhibitions. It also includes one- off purchases and donations to complement the historic collections, in keeping with the desire to show all aspects of a medium that is constantly evolving.

Particular attention has been paid to vernacular photography, such as the exhibition En dilettante. Histoire et petites histoires de la photographie amateur presented in 2022, following on from Le temps retrouvé twenty years earlier. The exhibition also focuses on photography in Belgium, with artists such as Yves Auquier, Thomas Chable, Katrien de Blauwer, Marc Trivier, Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt and Liliane Vertessen, to name but a few of the photographers of a generation that has been joined by the more recent work of Olivier Cornil, Michael Dans, Sarah Lowie, Zoé van der Haegen and Simon Vansteenwinckel. The photographic missions, organised between 2009 and 2015, also find their rightful place, highlighting the Charleroi region and its inhabitants and underlining the Museum’s territorial roots. Not forgetting international photography, illustrated in particular by James Barnor, Paul Fusco, Sergio Larrain, Lisette Model, Daido Moriyama, Malik Sidibé and the Europeans Stéphan Gladieu, Laura Henno, Germaine Krull, Bertrand Meunier, Peter Mitchell, Bernard Plossu and many others to be discovered in the catalogue.

This new volume is also an opportunity to highlight the magazines, books and cameras that make up a significant part of the collection, and which also illustrate the multiplicity of photography.