Guided tour with Jean-Louis Schoellkopf and Michel Poivert

As part of our final weekend before the PERSPECTIVES program closes on December 5, we invite you to a guided tour of the exhibition The Focus of the Documentary in the presence of photographer Jean-Louis Schoellkopf and Michel Poivert, a photography historian and professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

For more than fifty years, photographer Jean-Louis Schoellkopf, born in 1946, has been developing a body of photographic work dedicated to the end of the industrial era, working-class culture, and the transformations taking place in different regions—particularly the urban landscape.
This first exhibition features a selection of personal and commissioned works focused on portraiture and urbanism, including his installation presented at the Documenta X from Cassel in 1997. Jean-Louis Schoellkopf is particularly attuned to the reality of spaces. His portraits follow a consistent approach: he photographs his subjects in their familiar surroundings—at work or at home—allowing them to pose naturally. His approach to the urban landscape, meanwhile, captures the collective experience and offers a clear interpretation of urban history, which is constantly reshaped by human activity.