The excitement of photography
AVANT-PREMIÈRE
Dominated by Paris Photo, which honors the images of many of its great photographers at the Grand Palais, November welcomes multiple events around still images throughout France. From Sophie Ristelhueber to Cindy Sherman, Nobuoshi Araki to Rachel Seidu, Mark Cohen to Tyler Mitchell, contemporary photography is on display from every angle.
Text by Jean-Marie Durand
November, 2025
PhotoSaintGermain
The PhotoSaintGermain festival, directed by Aurélia Marcadier, transforms Saint-Germain-des-Prés into a vibrant hub for photography every fall, turning this sleepy neighborhood into an attractive destination hosting numerous free exhibitions in its museums, cultural centers, galleries, and bookstores. The proposed itinerary takes visitors on a journey through both the well-trodden and lesser-known paths of photography's past and present. On the heritage side, we will linger over Gabrielle Hébert at the Musée d'Orsay; Étienne-Jules Marey at the Musée d'Histoire de la Médecine; Robert Adams, a major figure in American photography, at the Zander Galerie; Letizia Battaglia and Franco Zecchin at the Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès with their Sicilian chronicles...
Contemporary photography will be represented by a few leading figures: Candida Höfer, representative of the legendary Düsseldorf School, will exhibit images of interior spaces taken between 2000 and 2016 in Los Angeles and Beijing, as well as others that lean toward abstraction, at the Laffanour Gallery.
L'Espace Art Absolument will host an exhibition, MEN, bringing together renowned artists (David Meskhi, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, etc.) exploring the question of masculinity. Marion Poussier, invited to the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris-Malaquais, presents her series On est là, which is full of sensitive attention to the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis. Rebekka Deubner presents her work at Shmorévaz on male contraception through portraits of users of thermal contraception, known as testicular contraception. At the Irish Cultural Center, Daragh Soden, winner of the Grand Prix du Jury for photography at the 2017 Hyères Festival, exhibits a new series of large-format portraits, Ladies & Gentlemen, focusing on gender roles and the performative nature of identity. “There is no longer an ‘after’ in Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” sang Juliette Greco; today, she might sing that her present is being played out through PhotoSaintGermain.
Paris, November 6th to 30th.