L'exposition « La photographie en toutes lettres » à la MEP

From 10 June to 13 September 2026, the MEP presents a collective exhibition bringing together 34 artists from the Neuflize OBC Corporate Collection and the MEP's collections. Conceived as an accessible ABC book for all audiences, “La photographie en toutes lettres” weaves unexpected correspondences between the works. Each association opens a door, contradicts assumptions, and invites everyone to construct their own reading, between intimate reminiscences and shared imaginaries. These are fragments that compose the small stories of the great history of photography, in an experience that is at once playful, free, and tinged with nostalgia.

What do adolescence, fairy tales, museums, or even Burgundy have in common? Created to mark the bicentenary of photography, the exhibition La photographie en toutes lettres is conceived in close collaboration with the Neuflize OBC Corporate Collection.

It brings together works from this collection, placed in dialogue with those from the MEP's collections, thus offering a cross-cutting perspective on the richness of these two photographic ensembles.

Far from any linear history, it unfolds a reading made of associations, encounters, and shifts, where the works dictate their order, independently of any chronology or hierarchy.

Each letter becomes a word, each word evokes a set of works that converse with each other in sometimes surprising ways. Here, LIFE Magazine crosses paths with Kodak advertising, Noctambules find themselves in the Museum, and Simulacre negotiates with Vérité.

These juxtapositions reveal the identity of the Neuflize OBC Corporate Collection – rooted in contemporary creation, but whose roots delve into the avant-gardes of the 1920s.

From Rineke Dijkstra to Bernard Plossu, from Agnès Geoffray to Florence Henri, the many artists gathered in the exhibition bear witness to multiple ways of seeing, showing, and thinking about the photographic image.

Drawing inspiration from John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972), the exhibition takes from this foundational work the idea that “seeing comes before words”: we first perceive reality before naming and conceptualising it.

This principle structures this journey, where displacement and enigma take precedence over demonstration. Each room proposes an association that asserts itself before any explanation.

Each entry in this lexicon is accompanied by texts, quotes, and anecdotes that illuminate, without ever exhausting it, the plurality of narratives carried by photography.

La photographie en toutes lettres is part of a long-standing partnership between the MEP and the Neuflize Corporate Foundation.