Maison d’Auguste Comte presents Emilio Azevedo’s Rondônia as part of the PhotoSaintGermain festival.
Rondônia (How I Fell in Love with a Line)
The exhibition examines the way the Amazonian territory becomes image, and offers an open narrative of its incorporation into the Brazilian national space. It explores the territory’s transformations through a dialogue between archives and contemporary images, inviting viewers to perceive the temporal and symbolic strata that traverse the forest.
Emilio Azevedo’s visual investigation is structured around archives documenting Marshal Rondon’s explorations at the beginning of the 20th century and their contemporary continuation, in particular the Trans‑Amazonian highway BR‑364. The contemporary photographs enter into dialogue with the archives preserved at the Musée du quai Branly, offering a cross‑reading of past and present.
Through montage and the confrontation between archival work and fieldwork, the artist links events that at first sight have no connection. In the manner of Beckett, one digression calls forth another. Facts, hypotheses, official history, erased memory and personal narrative intermingle, letting fiction infiltrate reality, or revealing the fictional part within grand national narratives.
Each place becomes a mirror of the other: traces of earlier explorations shed light on today’s transformations, while contemporary roads and landscapes bring to the surface the social, political and symbolic tensions that traverse the territory. The construction of the exhibition reflects this crossing, inviting visitors to move through the images and archives and to perceive time and space as interlocking strata.
Echoing this exploration, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac presents, from 9 October 2025 to 26 January 2026, works by Emilio Azevedo from his project Rondônia (How I Fell in Love with a Line), winner of the museum’s Photography Prize.
Maison d’Auguste Comte
The last home of the philosopher and founder of positivism, the Maison d’Auguste Comte is both an apartment‑museum and an archive‑library dedicated to the philosopher and to nineteenth‑century thought. For several years the Maison has hosted photography exhibitions as part of PhotoSaintGermain, and it presents scholarly exhibitions on Comte and positivism.
In partnership with the Musée du quai Branly
With the support of the Embassy of Brazil
Curator of the exhibition: Daniel Jablonski
Maison d’Auguste Comte
10, rue Monsieur‑le‑Prince
75006 Paris
01 43 26 08 56
www.augustecomte.org
https://www.photosaintgermain.com/
Friday 14 November 2025, 7:00 pm: Conversation between Armelle Enders (historian of Brazil) and Emilio Azevedo (artist photographer) — Around the Rondon expedition and the exhibition “Rondônia” at the Maison d’Auguste Comte.
Exhibition hours
- From November 6 to 30, the exhibition will be open Tuesday to Saturday, free admission (2:00–6:00 pm).
- From December 2 to 20, the exhibition will open during the museum’s usual hours and rates (Tuesday and Wednesday 2:00–5:00 pm, or by request on other days).
