Flash tour: exhibition «Portraits d'intérieurs», Théâtre du Nord
The Théâtre du Nord invites the Institut pour la photographie to invest its spaces of conviviality and to present exhibitions during the entire period of its closure for works. After the presentation of six pre-show exhibition programmes in its premises in Vieux-Lille, the Institut pour la photographie is now continuing all of its activities outside the walls until it reopens. During his projects carried out between 1989 and 2008, Jean-Louis Schoellkopf, whose photographic archives are kept by the Institut pour la photographie, paid particular attention to the inhabitants (s) of cities in mutation in France (Saint-Étienne, Liévin, Strasbourg, Melle, Hayange…) and abroad (in Germany, Portugal, Belgium or Palestine). Following a simple and always identical shooting protocol, he photographs them in their interior, revealing the singularity of lifestyles within common configurations, which are the types of housing, social affiliations or professional and cultural identities. Over nearly 20 years, these portraits of interiors show the reverse side of architecture. Like an anthropologist, Jean-Louis Schoellkopf records the ways of inhabiting and investing space, making us attentive to the personal stories they evoke. In 2021, French photographer Jean-Louis Schoellkopf filed all of his negatives, ektachromes and contact plates (more than 11,000 phototypes, representing about 30,000 images) which have joined the photographic archives of the Institut pour la photographie alongside the negatives, contact plates and contact prints by Agnès Varda and the entire photographic archive of Bettina Rheims, more than 300,000 phototypes.