Curators: François Cheval, Yasmine Chemali

In early 1953, in Vallauris, André Villers (1930-2016) crossed paths with destiny: Pablo Picasso. From this 
encounter arose ten years of friendship and creative complicity. Pablo Picasso gave him his first 
Rolleiflex, the “sewing machine” which would become his instrument of alchemy. From 
Diurnes (1962) to Pliages d’Ombres (1977), André Villers established himself as an innovator, 
cutting, layering, and transforming the image. Faithful to the spirit of Michel Butor, André Villers 
pushed the boundaries of visual storytelling. The image was no longer a mirror of reality, but a fracture; it questioned the distance between the author, the subject, and the viewer. Even today, we are invited to rethink photography. With Elsa Leydier and Clara Chichin, the photographic act regains the slowness and precision of an artisanal gesture. The photographer once again becomes a nomadic gatherer, a sower of images, and a patient companion of the living. It is a point worth dwelling on: photography can, and must, remain a living organism—a pigmentary body composed of signs, emulsions, and vibrant microelements.

André Villers (1930-2016) was born in Beaucourt, in the east of France. Suffering from bone decalcification at the age of sixteen, he joined the Vallauris sanatorium in 1947 for treatment. It was there that he discovered photography, took his first classes, and began his experiments with developers.

A self-taught artist, André Villers developed a practice in the 1950s centered on the exploration of photographic processes: double exposures, solarizations, collages, photograms, printing variations, and direct interventions on the image. His laboratory became an essential space for experimentation, where photography is conceived as material, as visual writing, and as a process. Each image is the result of a patient dialogue between artistic intent, technical constraint, and mastered chance.

His focus on processes was accompanied by a marked interest in books and publishing, which he considered privileged sites of invention.
Throughout his career, André Villers created works and book-objects in collaboration with artists, writers, and poets, including Pablo Picasso, Claude Viallat, Ben, Arman, César, Hans Hartung, Jacques Prévert, Michel Butor, and Louis Aragon.

 

Clara Chichin (1985) is a graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris and holds a Master’s degree in Letters, Arts, and Contemporary Thought. For the past ten years, she has been developing a photographic practice focused on the sensitive experience of landscape, wandering, and the everyday.

Her work is part of a poetics of the « image-sensation », where the landscape, plants, and natural elements are approached as perceptive materials rather than descriptive motifs, placing walking and wandering at the heart of her process and engaging in an embodied relationship with places, where the landscape is felt rather than merely represented. Enrolled in an ecopoetic photographic writing, her research interrogates our relationship with the living world and proposes forms of re-enchantment in the face of contemporary ecological stakes.

Clara Chichin was a finalist for the Leica Prize in 2017 and has exhibited notably at the Abbaye de Saint-Georges de Boscherville, the Jean de Paume, and the 38th International Festival of Fashion, Photography, and Accessories at Villa Noailles.
Between 2022 and 2024, she developed a co-creation with Sabatina Leccia, resulting in the publication Le Bruissement entre les murs (Sun/Sun, 2024), a finalist for the Author’s Book Award at the Rencontres d’Arles and the Nadar Prize 2025.

 

Elsa Leydier (1988) is a visual photographer, a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles in 2015. After living for more than eight years in Brazil, she currently lives and works between Paris and Marseille.

Elsa Leydier’s practice develops primarily around the question of the power of iconic images.
While adopting the visual codes of theses idealized representations, she strives to deconstruct them to highlight social and environmental justice issues.
Her work takes the form of photographic installations mixing the visual codes of activism and luxury, arranged like visual ecosystems.

She was a winner of the Maison Ruinart/Paris Photo Prize in 2019, and one of the winners of the Dior Prize for Young Photography that same year. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Colombia, the United States, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and in collective exhibitions and fairs, notably at Paris Photo, ARCO Madrid, the Rencontres de la Photograhie d’Arles, during the Month of Photography Los Angeles or at the Kyotographie festival.

Exhibition opening
February 20 at 6:30 p.m.

Guided tour with Clara Chichin and Elsa Leydier
Saturday, February 21 at 3 p.m.

Tour for young audiences: “Photography: drawing with light”

Have you ever wondered how light becomes a photo?
Equipped with optical filters, explore the many ways photography has evolved throughout history: darkroom, colorization, superimposition… These experiences will challenge you to question what you see and better understand the power of images.

For ages 4 and up, free on the first Sunday of the month.
Sundays: March 1, April 5, May 3, June 7

Flash tour
No reservation required, every Wednesday and Saturday at 3 p.m.