PARIS.- Jeu de Paume is dedicating a major monographic exhibition to Luc Delahaye (b. in Tours in 1962), presenting his photographic work between 2001 and 2025. This decisive period in his career coincides with his increasing distance from photojournalism and his commitment to the field of art.

A prominent war photojournalist in the 1990s and a former member of the Magnum agency, he is part of a generation of photographers who re-examined the articulation between documentary practices and an artistic dimension.

For twenty-five years, his photographs, most often in large format and in colour, have offered a glimpse of the ills of the contemporary world. From the Iraq War to the Ukraine War, from Haiti to Libya, from the OPEC conferences to the COP, Delahaye explores the echo of the world and the institutions supposed to regulate it.

Sometimes produced in a single shot, other times veritable compositions assembled by computer over a period of months from fragments of images, Luc Delahaye’s photographs are always an encounter, whether immediate or deferred, with reality. A reality that is expressed, through a form of documentary withdrawal, without demonstration:

“To arrive via a form of absence, a form of unconsciousness perhaps, at a unity with reality. A silent unity. The practice of photography is a rather beautiful thing: it enables the reunification of the self with the world.”

This exhibition, the first devoted to the photographer in Paris since 2005, offers a retrospective look at twenty-five years of creation. It brings together some forty large-format works, some of which have never been seen before or were created especially for the occasion, as for example, the video about the Syrian conflict, which Delahaye has been working on for many years, as well as a large installation in a novel format for the artist. The exhibition also provides the opportunity for visitors to discover Luc Delahaye’s creative process, through his visual sources and the images he discards.