Optical Theater - Photo by Zucca

The Exhibition Optical Theater - Photo by Zucca brings together for the first time Pierre Zucca’s diverse visual practices: set photography, filmmaking, and his collaboration with the writer Pierre Klossowski. 

"To reveal what lies hidden in the image beyond what it shows, what words convey when the body expresses itself in its own language, and what cinema expresses through the way it manages to show what it shows or to highlight what it conceals"

Pierre Zucca, 1978

It is this apparent heterogeneity that lies at the heart of the exhibition. Loosely inspired by an unrealized project by Max Berto, Jean-André Fieschi, and Sylvie Zucca (The Path to Pleasure, 2000), Optical Theater invites us on a journey through various forms of representation, from movie posters to books, from the set to the screen.

Featuring a large number of previously unpublished photographs, the exhibition explores "the dual nature of the image", both a piece of evidence and a work of fiction. It is a story told through its margins, where we take "the risk of betraying someone for a chance not to betray them".

↘︎ In collaboration with: Sylvie Zucca, the Cinémathèque Française, and the Christophel Collection

↘︎ Production: Institut pour la photographie

↘︎ Aurélien Froment is one of the recipient of the Research and Creative Work Support Program's first edition "Photography as a Medium of Communication"