"Guaranteed resemblance"

The portrait in the collections of the French Museum of Photography

“Guaranteed resemblance” is how the first portrait photographers of the 1840s, proclaiming this incomparable quality, intended to settle their score with the painters who preceded them… and who, however, often used the same selling point of their services!
The portrait is a major subject, not only in the history of photography, but in the entire history of representations. With this exhibition, from its largely unpublished collections, the French Museum of Photography proposes to meet faces who posed in front of the lens from the middle of the 19th century to the present day.
Three sections organize the exhibition. The first addresses the main functions assigned to the photographic portrait: remembering, showing oneself, putting a face on a name, collecting or documenting, from the first daguerreotypes to contemporary images. The «portrait machines» are evoked in a second space: since the very first time and still today to some extent, this field of photography justifies the use of the professional, his equipment and his specific know-how. A final room reveals how contemporary artists have decided to explore what is supposed to be a “representation of the human figure”.
If the historical contributions are present, the original scenography of the exhibition frees itself from the strict chronology to privilege the free discovery of more than 400 images and objects whose richness and diversity call for fine observation, comparisons, astonishment.