The collective exhibition "Love Songs" at the European House of Photography (MEP) offers, through 14 photographic series, a journey into the intimate lives of the great artists of the 8th art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Until August 21, 2022, the event brings together Nan Goldin, Nobuyoshi Araki and Hervé Guibert.

Diving, in images, into intimacy and the capture of love experiences through the ages.


Directed by:

Olivier JUSZCZAK

  • The collective exhibition "Love Songs" offers a new look at the history of photography through the prism of romantic relationships.

  • The first part of the exhibition – side A – is made up of series from the 1950s to 2000. The second part – side B – presents images from the 2000s to today.

  • At the heart of the exhibition, the ensembles of Nobuyoshi Araki and Nan Goldin constitute the starting point of this unprecedented reinterpretation.

  • Inspired by Nan Goldin's "Ballad" ("The Ballad of Sexual Dependency", 1973-1986), Love Songs is conceived as a musical compilation.

  • Throughout the journey, the images invite you to discover a multitude of intimate stories and a diversity of love patterns.

    Like this series directed by Hervé Guibert (1973-1991) whose subject is Thierry Jouno, with whom he lived in love for 15 years.

  • Or the dazzling photographic work produced from 1979 to 1983 by Alix Cléo Roubaud (1952-1983), illustrating his relationship with the mathematician and poet Jacques Roubaud.

  • Among these classic series from the 1950s to 2000 featuring intimacy, we find images from the shocking book by Larry Clark entitled

    Tulsa

    (1971), a work in which he makes an uncompromising report of the drift of a lost American youth.

  • The second floor of the exhibition presents more contemporary works, produced from the 2000s to the present day.

  • Two dazzling love stories lived and photographed by two couples of photographers are presented: the Swedish JH Engström and the French Margot Wallard (“Foreign Affair”, 2011) on one side, and the Chinese Rong Rong and the Japanese Inri ( “Personal letters”, 2000), on the other.

  • In the “Photographed colors of Love” series, the Chinese photographer Lin Zhipeng (aka n°223) shows a youth who, despite the authoritarian regime in China, live their sexuality to the full without prohibitions.

  • Or the Japanese Hideka Tonomura who interferes in her mother's love life in her series “Mama Love” (2007).

  • Two other projects are presented alongside the “Love Songs” exhibition.

    The

    Lovesody

    series (2008) by young Japanese photographer Motoyuki Daifu which tells his dazzling love story with a young mother.

  • And

    Another Love Story

    , produced in response to an invitation from the MEP, by Franco-Dominican photographer Karla Hiraldo Voleau, born in 1992.

  • Culture

  • Slideshow

  • Exposure

  • Ile-de-France

  • Nudity

  • Paris

  • Photo