The CéTàVOIR association, which organizes ImageSingulières in the Cévennes region in France, is presenting an exhibition featuring Dorothéa Lange, Ansel Adams, and Edward S. Curtis. It is presented as follows:
We feel it is an opportune time to revisit, given current events, a chapter in modern American history, from 1900 to 1945. We have chosen three of the greatest American photographers to illustrate this theme.
Edward S. Curtis, who documented Native American culture at a time when the indigenous people and their culture were under threat.
Dorothea Lange, invited to participate in the adventure of the FSA (Farm Security Administration), and her iconic images of the great crisis of 1929.
Ansel Adams, in an unusual register, the great landscape painter, and his work on the internment of Americans of Japanese origin in California.
This exhibition opens with one of the most fascinating photographic adventures of the first half of the twentieth century, and the famous pictures of Native Americans of the American West and North America by the photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis.
From 1900 to 1930, he produced more than 50,000 images. It embodies one of the most impressive examples of documentary photography, blending anthropology, ethnology, investigation, and documentation focused on a single subject. In this life’s work, Edward S. Curtis, whom the Native Americans called “the Shadow Catcher,” succeeded in capturing for eternity the beauty of a world that had vanished forever.
The exhibition continues with the work of renowned photographer Dorothea Lange, whose 1936 portrait of Florence Owens Thompson, better known as the “migrant mother,” has become iconic. It was following the Great Depression of 1929 that Dorothea Lange was recruited by the Farm Security Administration (FSA, an American organization created by the Department of Agriculture to help the poorest farmers), and joined the photography section alongside other greats such as Walker Evans. Her iconic work on the Great Depression, which bears witness to the living and working conditions of rural Americans, is of great emotional force, aiming to denounce injustices and influence public opinion.
The final part of the exhibition deals with a lesser-known subject. During the Second World War, some 110,000 American nationals of Japanese origin were placed in internment camps starting in 1942 after the debacle at Pearl Harbor. It was in 1943 that Ansel Adams decided to document the most famous of these, the Manzanar camp, located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, north of Los Angeles, California. The man who would later become one of the most renowned American photographers took more than 200 portraits there using a 4×5 view camera, but also documented the daily lives of the prisoners. And the few landscapes that emerged from this work foreshadow his future work.
Dorothéa Lange, Ansel Adams, and Edward S. Curtis
Three Perspectives on the United States of America from 1900 to 1945
August 2–31, 2025
La Cure
7 rue Tra l’église
30770 Aumessas
du vendredi au mardi de 15h à 19h
fermé mercredi et jeudi
