Louvre Photo – Espace presse du musée du Louvre

The Louvre opened only a few a long time earlier than the invention of images. Combining actuality and the world of creativeness, journeying by way of each time and area, the museum would go on to turn out to be a wellspring of inspiration for individuals who practised this new artwork kind.
This unprecedented exhibition takes the Louvre as a mannequin, a topic, a supply of inspiration and a place to begin for reinvention. It presents each images taken at the Louvre and images taken of the Louvre, its artworks, its exhibition galleries and its open areas, in addition to guests each well-known and nameless, museum staff, hidden nooks and restricted corridors.

Several initiatives to create a ‘Museum of Photography’ on the Louvre emerged as early because the 1850s, however none was really carried out.
The first photographers properly understood the ability of this new expertise, which allowed them to signify artworks and to exhibit their mastery over their craft. In so doing, they established images as an artwork kind in itself. Many, like Charles Marville, vied to turn out to be the Louvre’s official photographer. In 1883, the Louvre signed an settlement with Ad. Braun et Cie, an organization identified for its reproductions of artworks.
The Louvre quickly grew to become a images topic and a recurring motif. Its structure, areas, collections and gardens have been represented, reproduced, highlighted and reinterpreted from the very early days of images. The Louvre thus joined a shared photographic world, each actual and imaginary, during which well-liked tradition grew to become a part of the museum, generally additionally furthering established fields of data.

Photographs on the Louvre and images of the Louvre

‘Louvre Photo’ will cowl the lengthy interval spanning from the invention of images till immediately, from the primary photographers to these invited to {photograph} the museum in trendy instances – most just lately Robert Polidori.
This was a interval characterised by momentous occasions, just like the Paris Commune, the First and Second World Wars, and the growth of tourism and diplomatic relations in the course of the Trente Glorieuses, the thirty-year span of financial prosperity that France loved from 1945 to 1975. In that very same time, the museum’s historical past was marked by a number of milestones, equivalent to its transformation from a palace right into a museum beneath the Second Empire, the displacement after which return of its artworks in the course of the First and Second World Wars, and the Grand Louvre works of the Eighties.
The exhibition additionally tracks celebrities by way of the Louvre galleries over the ages, in addition to festive and social occasions, vogue exhibits and movie units.

A thematic go to showcasing all main images methods

By limiting its topic to a single setting, delimited by the partitions of the palace and the gates of the Tuileries Garden, the exhibition is ready to function each method within the subject of images – from early daguerreotypes to trendy digital photographs. It can even show artist’s proofs in addition to copy items, projections, slide movies and postcards. It will unfold alongside a thematic axis, highlighted by deliberate scenographic decisions, with a recent aesthetic supposed to emphasize dynamic angles and viewpoints.
‘Louvre Photo’ will convey out the Louvre’s wealth of photographic archives from its curatorial departments and lively documentary data, in addition to collections from varied French establishments, together with the National Archives, the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie, the French National Library, the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée Carnavalet and the Historical Library of the City of Paris. The exhibition can even showcase photographic commissions ordered by the Louvre from the early 2000s.
Museum guests and companions might be invited to take part in a photograph contest over the course of the exhibition, sending of their images of the Louvre (its buildings, assortment, galleries and restricted areas) through Instagram utilizing the hashtag #LouvrePhoto. Winning photos might be displayed within the exhibition.

‘Louvre Photo’ invitations guests to discover and uncover, taking a step again and providing a brand new take a look at the museum, the establishment and its collections – generally with a contact of humour and subversiveness.

Curatorship
Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Senior Curator, Advisor to the President-Director of the Musée du Louvre and Quentin Bajac, Director of the Jeu de Paume.
Exhibition design by Juan-Felipe Alarcón, with graphic design by Atelier Pierre/Pierre.

credit score picture : Barbara Klemm. Musée du Louvre, 1987. Photographie. © Barbara Klemm / courtesy Galerie – Peter – Sillem

 With the help of Visa Infinite.

This exhibition is a part of the Ministry of Culture’s Photography Bicentenary label and official programme from 1 September 2026 to 30 September 2027.