Le regard à l’œuvre (2006)

As part of Photo Month during the FIAC and Paris Photo fairs, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts hosted a major exhibition of 42 black-and-white photographs by Jean-Baptiste Huynh from October 24, 2006 through January 14, 2007. For this first large-scale retrospective in a prestigious French institution, Jean-Baptiste Huynh used the school’s spaces to exhibit an encapsulation of a project he had worked on for ten years, focused on the study of the face throughout different age groups and among the major cultural groups. Through a variety of particularly iconic faces and still life pieces from his travels to Asia and Africa, he reproduced a singular, universal vision of humanity steeped in spirituality.

All prints in the exhibition were made using silver chlorobromide. To achieve this, Jean-Baptiste Huynh used a traditional paper that is no longer in production, enabling highly precise images and an infinity of nuances between black and white. The collection’s large-scale prints (120×120 cm) are now impossible to recreate and have therefore become truly unique.

Part of this exhibition was presented at the Vienna Museum of Contemporary Art in June 2009.