‘Body To Body’ At Le Pompidou

Paris is known for many things: the fashion, the Eiffel Tower, the pastry and boulangerie dishes, the baguettes, the Louvre, just to name a few of its most common tourist attractions. But if you ever find yourself in Paris and you have a free afternoon to go sightseeing, we highly recommend that you add the Pompidou Centre to your itinerary while you’re in town.

Founded in 1977, this beautiful building designed by Renzo Piano & Richard Rogers holds one of the most important art galleries in Europe and in the world, for that matter. And while the Louvre is the most popular, most visited museum in the world, the Pompidou offers a more diverse, eclectic approach, focusing less on the classics and more on the disruptive side of the art world, housing collections with pieces from underground, queer, less-known names than its renowned Parisian counterpart.

One good example of what you can find in the Pompidou is the ‘Body to Body’ exhibit, as it features “more than 350 photographs and documents by some 120 photographers, and it offers a unique insight into photographic portrayals of the human race in the 20th and 21st centuries. It creates dialogue between two photographic collections: the public collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne and the private one of collector Marin Karmitz”. The official Pompidou site states: “The exhibition goes beyond the traditional categories of study such as “portrait”, “self-portrait”, “nudes” and so-called “humanist” photography. It reveals the particularities and “photographic” ways of seeing, showing the connections between artists. It brings to light common obsessions in ways of addressing the subject and stylistic approaches. The images on display also question the photographer’s responsibility: how does photography contribute to the birth of identities and their visibility? How does it recount individualities, the relationship with the Other? The exhibition is an encounter between two exceptional collections: the public collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, and the private one of collector and filmmaker Marin Karmitz.”

This exhibit puts humanity in the spotlight as the images from the various photographers that are participating in it, each in their own way and style, explore the art of depicting human beings, their emotions, and their singularities. The curation of this exhibition is what makes it successful, as all of these photographers share a common language within their imagery, and this secret dialogue they all speak is what links their work together and makes it cohesive, from shared techniques to their inspirations, they all have something in common.

“How do you capture the soul of a person and their identity in a single image?”, that’s the question this exhibits aims to answer with 500 images to achieve it. ‘Body to Body’ is a must for photography lovers everywhere.