Face à ce qui se dérobe : les clichés de la folie, is the title of the very striking exhibition at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce, on view through the 18th of January 2026. It is presented as follows.
In a box, a series of images titled “Les Folles” (The Mad Women) was found in the archives of the photographer Robert Demachy (1859–1936), preserved since 2004 at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce. In these photographs: a courtyard enclosed by imposing railings; are women restrained by straightjackets. Dressed in black skirts, some are seated on benches or lying directly on the ground; others are tied to armchairs in front of doors locked with steel bolts. A study tells us that they were made within the hospital of the Pitié-Salpêtrière at the start of the 1890s. This series of photographs stands apart from the rest of the pictorialist photographer’s archive. The viewer knows they are facing a rare document that constantly raises questions. How did the photographer enter this asylum? Why did he photograph these institutionalized women? What was his intention curiosity, voyeurism, exhibition, empathy? For what use did he intend these images? Then very quickly come ethical questions related to the right to the dignity of the people photographed and to their consent to be photographed. From these images, and from the questions they raise, came the desire to explore more broadly the relationship between photography and “madness.” Deliberately limited to the closed world of the psychiatric hospital in France, the exhibition presents different uses of the medium. Without claiming to be exhaustive, it seeks to make perceptible the gazes cast upon illness, to question the relationship to the other, and to probe the norms and the limits of representation.
Face à ce qui se dérobe : les clichés de la folie
Until January 18, 2026
Musée Nicéphore Niépce
28 quai des Messageries
71100 Chalon-sur-Saône
03 85 48 41 98
www.museeniepce.com
www.open-museeniepce.com
www.archivesniepce.com
