Photography from yesterday till now

AUVERGNE//SOUVIGNY - Until November 18th, 2012, the museum of Souvigny offers a called exhibition «The beginning of the photograph in the Allier»; trip in the past across different "portraits" of Bourbonnais at the end of the XIXth century to the beginning of the XXth century.

Taking photographs, it is a gesture that became ordinary. Pictures are born by the action of light at a speed beyond suspicion. But «the writing of light» is much more subtle than it seems. She demands of all subjects which constitute the humanity. It is an art, a technology, an evidence, a passion and the watch of collective memory.

Sometimes elated, sometimes criticised, the photography is, from its invention, a subject of debates or even of conflicts. To explain the impact of the photograph in the French society of the XIXth century only by technology would be too reducing. Sociology, philosophy and history here have to combine to include consequences of this major invention to populations.

This exhibition makes travel in the past across different "portraits" of Bourbonnais of the end of the XIXth century at the beginning of the XXth century. She offers to develop several big relatively linked topics some in others and showing, in one's own way, a picture different from our territory where this medium was used: the scientific, historical, artistic, tourist, sociological and media photograph.