In the early years of the 20th century, Céline Laguarde established herself as an international figure in the history of photography’s first artistic movement: pictorialism. Her body of work has finally emerged from a century of oblivion. The exhibition invites visitors to take part in a dual rediscovery: firstly, of someone who achieved a then unique and unprecedented degree of recognition in France as far as women photographers were concerned; secondly, and above all, of an artist who was already regarded in her lifetime as one of the major photographers of her day.
The exhibition’s main ambition is to spotlight a body of work of unsuspected quality, variety and longevity. A hundred and thirty original prints help visitors understand how the photographer came to acquire her reputation for virtuosity in the field of non-analog “art processes”, still considered today to be among the most complicated and sophisticated printing techniques (pigmentary procedures using gum bichromate and oil-based inks).
Bringing together portraits, studies of models, compositions of symbolist inspiration and landscapes, the selection (with some of its contents displayed alongside photographs by her male and female contemporaries) also highlights the evolutions and continuities, influences and dialogues, and originality and specificities that characterize Céline Laguarde’s body of work.
The exhibition is the result of new research and is based on a reconstitution of Céline Laguarde’s corpus, biography, career and critical acclaim. Her individual trajectory is considered in a triple context: that of an unusually eclectic network of artistic, literary, musical and scientific social ties; the regional, national and international context of art photography; and the still little-known context of female photography in France at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The event is an expression of the Musée d’Orsay’s commitment to the recomposition and preservation of Céline Laguarde’s unpublished personal collection in national collections. Following several acquisition campaigns carried out between 2017 and 2024, the institution now conserves the only collection truly representative of the photographer’s body of work. Comprising over 200 items, it is one of the world’s best preserved monographic collections devoted to pictorialist artists.
Finally, the exhibition Céline Laguarde Photographer (1873-1961) continues with the showcasing of its subject undertaken by the Musée d’Orsay in 2015. The exhibition Who’s Afraid of Women Photographers? 1839-1919 was the first in France to address the phenomenon of women photographers in the 19th and early 20th century. Rediscovered on that occasion, the first part of Céline Laguarde’s unpublished collection enabled her inclusion among the seventy-five British, American and French practitioners it featured. The autumn 2024 retrospective is not only the first to be devoted to Céline Laguarde but also the first to be dedicated to an artist photographer active in France before the First World War.
Curatorship
Thomas Galifot, Chief Curator of Photographs, Musée d’Orsay
Céline Laguarde Photographe (1873-1961)
Until January 12, 2025
Musée d’Orsay
Esplanade Valéry Giscard d’Estaing
75007 Paris, France
https://www.musee-orsay.fr
