The new Lille Photography Institute will host the photographic collections of Bettina Rheims, Jean-Louis Schoellkopf and Agnès Varda, and announced on Wednesday June 16 that its library will be a reference place for publishing, thanks to a generous donation of over 25,000 photography books from a private collector.
The archives of these three French photographers, who “take account of the diversity of the fields of activity of photography according to very distinct aesthetic approaches” will also be “an important resource for the critical study of our society from the 1940s to the present day”, estimates the Institute in a press release.
“With these funds, the Institute for Photography confirms its heritage ambition and its major role in the photographic landscape”, rejoices its president Marin Karmitz, for whom these funds “are of great importance for the history of photography”.
Bettina Rheims, born in 1952, entrusts the Institute with all of her archives: negatives, contact sheets, polaroids, prints, technical shooting sheets, notes, her publications including magazines and her library. Favoring studio work, she worked for advertising, took portraits of stars, and produced the official portrait of President Jacques Chirac. She also has a more personal work, especially around the female body. In 2014, she produced more than 50 portraits of female prisoners.
Jean-Louis Schoellkopf, born in 1946, has a documentary approach and is interested in social questions, in particular the consequences of the end of the industrial era on urban landscapes. He worked in Saint-Etienne, in Genoa, in Rotterdam, Stuttgart, Barcelona, in the 13th and 19th arrondissements of Paris, in Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing. He deposits at the Institute all of his negatives, ektachromes and contact sheets as well as his paper archives.
If Agnès Varda (1928-2019) is better known as a film director, she also has a photographic work “to explore”, estimates the Institute. She was notably the official photographer of the National People’s Theater from 1949 and has carried out many personal projects. His beneficiaries entrust all of their negatives, contact sheets and contact prints to the Institute.
A private collector has pledged a donation and a bequest of more than 25,000 books to the Institut pour la photographie de Lille: his library, built up over forty years ago, includes many books on Japanese photography. Annual donations began in 2020 with more than 2,000 books.
These funds will be presented during the third and final program of the Institute before it closes for work in October 2021.
The Institute for Photography, housed in a private mansion in Lille, opened its doors at the end of 2019. It was created by the Hauts-de-France region and the Rencontres d’Arles.
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