The photography of emotions

The Jeu de Paume presents an exhibition exploring the relationship between image and feeling through over a century of photography. The exhibition investigates how a seemingly superficial medium can instead narrate interiority, the emotional moment, and the gesture that betray the presence of an emotion. Through a thematic, rather than chronological, itinerary, the exhibition brings together art, documentary, and scientific photographs, alongside anonymous shots and archival materials. The sections address how emotion manifests itself in the face, the body, or movement, and how photographic technique - from exposure time to digital post-production - can amplify or dissolve the perception of feeling. The exhibition invites us to interpret photography as a language capable of making the invisible visible, of capturing what escapes: a tremor, a hesitation, a moment of intensity. The broad time span, from the 19th century to contemporary research, illustrates the variety of approaches with which artists and scholars have sought to understand the changing nature of emotions. On the occasion of the bicentenary of photography, Une histoire photographique des émotions offers a reflection on its most fragile and universal dimension: that which unites vision with human sensitivity, recalling that every image is, ultimately, an emotional trace of time.