Agnès Varda. Expo54

In June 1954, Agnès Varda opened the doors of her house on rue Daguerre to present a selection of portraits, nudes and still lifes in her courtyard, right on the walls. Her street and its neighbors are her favorite subjects, including Alexander Calder, whom she met through Jean Vilar, as well as Hans Hartung and Brassaï. Visitors are introduced to images that are striking in their style, heralding the aesthetics of an entire career.

Her humor and love of words already shine through; the personalization of everyday objects through what she calls her “funny faces”; the heart-shaped potato almost fifty years before her documentary Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse; the first images of Sète, where the photographer discerns lines of force, arranges perspectives, plays with shapes and textures to the limit of abstraction. Agnès Varda invites us to discover what she sees with her “curious eyes”.

Carnets is a collection created by the Institut pour la photographie des Hauts-de-France as part of its program to promote its photographers’ archives, in collaboration with the publishing house delpire & co.