PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION | MODERNE ART FAIR 2025

As part of Moderne Art Fair 2025, a photographic exhibition developed in collaboration with Centre d’art La Chapelle de Clairefontaine the dialogue between two major genres in the history of visual representation: portraiture and landscape. These classical forms—reimagined by photography from its very inception—are brought together here to showcase the expressive depth of a medium that, for nearly two centuries, has challenged perception and reshaped our relationship to reality.

From its invention, photography established itself as an artistic revolution, offering a level of immediacy and precision unmatched by painting. Portraiture became a field for direct, emotional exploration, while landscape photography revealed the subtleties of light, texture, and silence.

Once criticized for being too faithful to reality, photography has long since earned its place in the art world by asserting a visual language of its own. Today, in the age of artificial intelligence, the medium once again faces essential questions: how to depict reality without distorting it—or without fabricating it entirely? As the line between captured and generated image grows ever thinner, the stakes are increasingly complex.

The arrival of artificial intelligence in the field of photography is profoundly transforming the contemporary art market. Images can now be generated from simple text prompts, without a camera or a real scene, challenging the very notion of what constitutes “authentic photography.” For artists, galleries, and collectors, this evolution disrupts traditional criteria of value, intention, and authenticity.

While some view it as a threat to classical photography, others see it as a new creative frontier, where art, technology, and fiction converge. Photography is becoming a hybrid territory, reflecting a world saturated with images and undergoing deep transformation.

From the very beginning, photography has embodied modernity. It has adapted to each technological revolution—from black and white to digital—without ever losing its expressive power, and continues to evolve. Today, with AI, it reaches a decisive turning point: it reinvents itself in response to digital challenges and asserts itself more than ever as an ultra-modern art form.

« La photographie est une brève complicité entre la prévoyance et le hasard. »
— John Stuart Mill

« Avec l’intelligence artificielle, la photographie ne montre plus ce qui a été, mais ce qui aurait pu être. »
— Joan Fontcuberta, photographe et théoricien de l’image

CONTACT :
La Chapelle de Clairefontaine 
Centre d’art contemporain
Impasse de l’Abbaye
78120 Clairefontaine-en-Yvelines
Tél : 01 34 94 39 87
Mail : info@lachapelledeclairefontaine.fr

Joel-Peter WITKIN
Courtesy baudoin Lebon