Around the world in 250 photos at the Abattoirs museum in Toulouse

Usually, the Musée des Abattoirs offers a look at the world through the more or less distorting prism of art. With “Open your eyes”, he gives a much more realistic vision, captured by the lens of a hundred photographers. Because this year, the Water Tower is 50 years old but the famous Toulouse photo gallery, created by Jean Dieuzaide at the foot of the Pont Neuf, is closed for long works until the end of 2025. The museum of Abattoirs therefore decided to open its doors to him by devoting its major back-to-school exhibition to photography. In the temple of contemporary art, photographers of the XX^e and 21^e century will for eight months expose their vision of the world in all its splendor, its excess, its metamorphosis and its violence too.

“The closure of the Château d’eau is a great pretext to bring our photographic collections into dialogue,” comments Lauriane Gricourt, director of the Musée des Abattoirs and curator of the exhibition with Christian Caujolle. “The Château d’eau has a collection of 5,000 photos and we have 500 photographic works including installations based on photographs and artists’ books. Opening your eyes is not a chronological or historical exhibition but a journey theme which addresses the portrait, the body, the snapshot or even the relationship between the photographer and the model”.

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This exhibition of 250 photos and three installations brings together for the first time two public institutions, which is according to Pierre Esplugas-Labatut, deputy mayor delegated, in particular, for images and museums and president of Abattoirs, “a winning partnership- winner which allows the collections to come to life during the work on the Water Tower”.

A welcome that delights Christian Caujolle, the artistic advisor of the Château d’eau, because “the history of photography is the history of the evolution of views”.

Doisneau, Klein and the many others

If some big names in photography like Robert Doisneau, William Klein or Jean Dieuzaide find a legitimate place, the exhibition allows us to discover witnesses of the world on all continents and also very close to us.

Ariégeois Gaël Bonnefon, who studied at the Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, obtains a prominent place in the exhibition. A huge poster and two superimposed paintings cover a wall in one of the exhibition rooms. “Surrounded by these great names in photography, I feel it as an honor but I also have the feeling of not being in my place. My approach is poetic. I work with color and light to transcend reality.”

Visions of the world, the exhibition shows a lot from the offbeat self-portrait of Agnès Varda to the punk commitment of Ouka Leele, figure of the Spanish Movida. The eye is also drawn to conflicts and migrations which remind us that art and especially photography is a faithful and attentive witness to our times.