For this edition of Photo Days, Juliette Agnel takes over the workshop at L’École des Arts Joailliers, in resonance with the display upstairs of Roger Caillois’s mineral collection. The artist brings together a selection of photographic works centered on the mineral—Pulpí Geode, Flint—and, for the occasion, presents new works made within Sorbonne University’s mineral collection: La susceptibilité des Roches.
For several years now, Juliette Agnel has been carving out a singular furrow in the French photographic landscape. From the light of the skies to the depths of the earth, her eye traverses the layers of the visible to try to approach the invisible. The stones she photographs are not mere natural objects, but presences. They vibrate and reveal something of our own relationship to the world. It is the living part of matter that the artist sets before us.
Presented in a place dedicated to transmitting jewelry‑making savoir‑faire, this exhibition extends the attention paid to stones—not for their value, but for their symbolic, poetic, even cosmic power. It enters into dialogue with the thought of Roger Caillois, for whom minerals were already works of art, natural narratives to be deciphered. In his book L’Écriture des pierres (1970), Caillois celebrates the mineral’s capacity to produce images—without human intention. There he defends the idea that nature is itself an artist, and that certain stones, by their geometry, their veining, or their colors, carry a language—a form of primitive writing.
About L’École des Arts Joailliers
Founded in 2012 with the support of Van Cleef & Arpels, L’École des Arts Joailliers seeks to transmit jewelry culture to the widest possible audience through a variety of activities: courses, workshops, talks, exhibitions, books, and a podcast. The School activities cover three main fields: the history of jewelry, the world of stones, and craftsmanship. Since June 2024, it has opened, in an 18th‑century townhouse listed as a historic monument, a new setting with workshops and classrooms, an exhibition space, a bookshop, and a library, all dedicated to jewelry. With a long ashlar façade aligned with the street in a sober neoclassical style, the Hôtel de Mercy‑Argenteau (boulevard Montmartre) is one of the oldest private residences built on the Grands Boulevards and one of the few still preserved. It is listed in the City of Paris’s inventory of notable buildings. The exhibition is presented in a place devoted to sharing and discovering the world of jewelry,L’École des Arts Joailliers and is part of a partnership with the Maison Van Cleef & Arpels.
L’École des Arts Joailliers (Paris 9th)
Juliette Agnel – The Susceptibility of Rocks
in conjunction with the exhibition “Reveries of Stone: Poetry and Minerals of Roger Caillois”
November 6–30, 2025
L’École des Arts Joailliers
with the support of Van Cleef & Arpels
Hôtel de Mercy‑Argenteau, 16 bis boulevard Montmartre · Paris 9th
free entry, Tuesday–Sunday 11am–7pm / late opening on Thursday until 9pm
