Modernisme ou modernité, les photographes du cercle de Gustave Le Gray (1850-1860)

Forget everything you thought you knew about the birth of photography. In this exhibition, the Petit Palais reveals 160 shots of an extraordinary modernity, taken between 1850 and 1860 by Gustave Le Gray, famous photographer of the Second Empire, and a circle of amateurs who were just beginning to explore the art of the dark room. Audacious and original, compositions by Le Secq, Nègre, Greene, Salzmann and Bérenger were enough to inspire jealousy in the inter-war avant-garde, supposedly those who pushed photography into new realms of experimentation. Turns out, those realms were already well-trodden by innumerable talents.