Remember Me

Entitled “Remember Me,” in reference to an original work by Barbara Kruger that will be shown in the Rotunda of the museum, the exhibition pays tribute to the photographic medium. Through masterpieces and icons from the Pinault Collection, the exhibition is like a fugue. Constructed as a free-ranging journey without any chronology, it elicits unexpected correspondences and dialogues between genres and eras to offer viewers an open, sensorially driven experience of the history of photography.

From historical photographs to contemporary images, from Gustave Le Gray to Cindy Sherman, and from Dorothea Lange to Wolfgang Tillmans, by way of Man Ray and Louise Lawler, the Pinault Collection embraces the entire history of the photographic medium. It also showcases the breadth of its aesthetics and techniques. Presenting it in its entirety on the occasion of the bicentenary of the invention of photography feels especially relevant. And, through a selection of approximately one thousand works, this is precisely what the exhibition "Remember Me" does, for the first time ever.

"Among those objects that have a particular relationship with memory, photography today occupies a very special place. In 1827, this process was first praised for its ability to reproduce reality with an unprecedented degree of accuracy, but it soon came to provide the best possible material representations of mnemonic images. In 1859, Charles Baudelaire came to recognise this capacity to hold memory. To stop a moment in time, to immortalise a face, to allow the inescapably ephemeral nature of existence to live on —this is the essence of photography. It is about not forgetting, making the gaps in our memories disappear, reviving and sustaining our history, and thus defying death. While an impression is by its very nature evanescent, a photograph instead endures. Like a relic made of paper, a photograph both celebrates the present and contemplates what was and no longer is."
— Matthieu Humery, Advisor for Photography, Pinault Collection
 

With: Eugène Atget / Richard Avedon / Cecil Beaton / Erwin Blumenfeld / Constantin Brancusi / Steffi Brandl / Manuel Alvarez Bravo / Claude Cahun / Julia Margaret Cameron / George Frederic Cannons / Robert Capa / Henri Cartier-Bresson / Maurizio Cattelan / Robert Cumming / Imogen Cunningham / Raymond Depardon / Maté Dobokay / Robert Doisneau / Frantisek Drtikol / Pierre Dubreuil / John Edmonds / Walker Evans / Richard Fenton / Jim Goldberg / Nan Goldin / Peter Hujar / Constantin Joffe / André Kertesz / Rudolf Koppitz / Tarrah Krajnak / Barbara Kruger / Dorothea Lange / Louise Lawler / Gustave Le Gray / Annie Leibovitz / Zoe Leonard / Sherrie Levine / El Lissitsky / Dora Maar / Boris Mikhailov / Lee Miller / Tyler Mitchell / Zanele Muholi / Ugo Mulas / Youssef Nabil / Lusha Nelson / Helmut Newton / Meret Oppenheim / Paul Outerbridge / Irving Penn / Richard Prince / Eileen Quinlan / Man Ray / Paul Stone Raymor / Anne Rehbinder / Jack Robinson / Alexander Rodchenko / August Sander / Francescco Scavullo / Sherril Schell / Karl Schenker / Ernst Schneider / Cindy Sherman / Dayanita Singh / Edward Steichen / Paul Strand / Hiroshi Sugimoto / Wolfgang Tillmans / Deborah Turbeville / Danh Vo / Arthur Fellig Weegee / Edward Weston / Francesca Woodman.

Curated by: Matthieu Humery, Advisor for Photography, Pinault Collection & Lola Regard, Projects Officer.