The 13th Photographic Season of the Royal Abbey of Epau will take place from June 19 to November 2, 2025. This open-air exhibition unfolds an immersive visual journey through its 13-hectare park, in the heart of a 13th-century Cistercian site.
This new edition brings together heritage and contemporary creation through the perspectives of five international photographers. Their works, often presented in very large formats, are integrated into the landscapes and architecture of the site, revealing the richness of life, the fragility of our ecosystems, and the intimacy of often invisible worlds.
From the marine depths of Narelle Autio to the Japanese forests of Kazuaki Koseki, through the committed portraits of Jonas Missaye and the poetic creations of Delphine Blast and Fabien Michenet, visitors are invited to embark on an artistic journey filled with meaning and emotion. A sensitive and committed journey, accessible to all
Each stage of the journey offers an encounter between photography and landscape, between memory and imagination. Sponsored by the Sarthe Departmental Council, this photography season embodies the ambition to open heritage sites to new narratives, accessible to all audiences.
A season that shines beyond the Abbey
As every year, the Season extends “beyond the walls,” taking in the Sarthe locks, Le Mans train station, and the gates of the Hôtel du Département. It also welcomes the work of eight Sarthe classes, as part of the “Photography in Middle School – At the School of the Gaze” program, combining artistic education and civic engagement.
By inviting us to look at what we often don’t see, because it’s too small, too intimate, inaccessible, or forgotten, the photographers gathered for this new photography season offer a sensitive approach to our world. Each in their own way, this year’s five guest photographers invite us to take the time to connect, to rethink our surroundings, while allowing time for observation, of others and of ourselves.
Kazuaki KOSEKI, “Hotarubi – Summer Fairies”
The Japanese photographer invites us to observe fireflies, these fascinating creatures—called hotaru—that hold a central place in the Japanese imagination and culture, particularly due to their highly ephemeral nature (they have a lifespan of barely ten days). In the heart of Japanese forests, Koseki captures multiple exposures in a single image, superimposing glowing spheres of light and parabolic flight paths to create highly poetic images.
Delphine BLAST, “Baroque Opera”
In San Ignacio de Velasco, in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon rainforest, it’s not uncommon to hear baroque music wafting from the doors of the church, where classes are held for young residents.
In an unusual setting provided by the village’s baroque architecture, these young children, descendants of the Chiquitano Indians, masterfully handle violins and cellos. Arriving in the trunks of Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, the music of Vivaldi, Schumann, and Bach punctuates the days of the inhabitants of this region of Bolivia and gives hope to the younger generation proud to perpetuate this tradition.
Jonas MISSAYE, “Memory and Reparation”
Paying tribute to the diversity of peoples and cultures, where each person, through their differences, brings their complementarity—such is the commitment of the photographer from Le Mans. Exhibited in human zoos in 1882 and 1892, Kali’na and Arawak, indigenous peoples of the Guiana Plateau, froze to death in Paris. To put faces to the story, to put names to the story, to highlight the fact that there are still descendants of this dark chapter of the colonial era.
To complement the colossal work undertaken by the Moliko Alet association, in partnership with the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, Jonas Missaye has undertaken a photographic project between French Guiana and Suriname. This photographic work is carried out with a view camera, the same photographic process used by other photographers in 1882 and 1892 to photograph the Kali’na and Arawak exhibited at the Jardin d’Acclimatation in Paris.
Fabien MICHENET “Pélagie”
Through countless hours of night dives over several years, hundreds of kilometers of drifting off the coast of Polynesia, and thousands of photographs taken in the natural environment, Fabien Michenet has documented a universal and little-known phenomenon that has punctuated ocean life since time immemorial. The phenomenon of the great vertical migration of marine fauna from the great depths, each night. These previously unseen photographs reveal the astonishing reality of oceanic and abyssal diversity. Unexpected encounters with these tiny or immense animals, these transparent or luminous beings, these monsters of the deep, these lethal and immortal jellyfish, these primordial animals hundreds of millions of years old, lulled by the songs of whales, in weightlessness.
Narelle AUTIO “The Place in Between” & “The Eyes of Her”
A photographer based in Australia, Narelle Autio enjoys photographing while immersed in the sea, her second home. Underwater, she waits for divers to disturb the calm of the place. From this emerges chimerical figures suspended in suspension. Unique underwater portraits capture the moment when the sea takes hold of bodies, cocooned in the bubbles. It is this fascinating moment, between worlds, in total suspension, that she shares with us here. Narelle Autio offers us a dialogue between the series “The Place in Between” (2021) and “The Eyes of Her” (2024), allowing us to explore our connection with the underwater world. From the surreal, abstract, and sensitive capture of these submerged bodies, she gradually lets a poetic and aesthetic narrative emerge, evoking the mermaid and other mythical figures populating the seas.
PHOTOGRAPHY IN MIDDLE SCHOOL – AT THE SCHOOL OF THE EYES
This year again, we will have the pleasure of rediscovering the original creations of eight classes of middle school students from Sarthe who participated in the “Photography in Middle Schools – At the School of the Eyes” program. Each class, accompanied by a professional photographer and visual artist Lucas Grandin, was able, throughout the year, to imagine a scenographic project from A to Z, from the development of the subject to the scenography and the installation of the exhibition.
THE OFF-SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPHY SEASON
Since 2019, two new exhibitions have expanded the departmental photography season: Solesmes and Roëzé-sur-Sarthe. This will be an opportunity to revisit the work of two artists we have already had the pleasure of presenting during previous editions of the photography season.
13th Photography Season of the Royal Abbey of Épau from June 19 to November 2, 2025
