HÉLOÏSE CONESA

Doctor in art history from Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne University, Héloïse Conésa has been the Chief Curator of Contemporary Photography at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) since 2014. Previously, she was the Curator for Modern Art and Photography at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg from 2009 to 2014, where she curated several exhibitions. Since joining the BnF, she has co-curated several editions of the Bourse du Talent from 2014 to 2019 at the BnF and exhibitions such as Dans l’atelier de la Mission Photographique de la DATAR (Rencontres d’Arles, 2017) and Paysages français: une aventure photographique (1984-2017) (BnF, 2017). She curated exhibitions at the BnF. She also contributed to managing the large photographic commission "Radioscopie de la France des années 2020" entrusted to the BnF by the Ministry of Culture.

One only needs to look at the books composing this selection to realize it truly reflects its curator! Héloïse Conésa intended for "this selection of books to revolve around the notion of materiality as it can be expressed in photography, ranging from analog prints to digital proofs, objects, or installations. Offering a dialogue with the works presented in the exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (François Mitterrand site), 'Epreuves de la matière,' some of which are by artists represented by the Bigaignon gallery (Renato d’Agostin, Vittoria Gerardi, Thomas Paquet, Yannig Hedel, Anne-Camille Allueva, Hideyuki Ishibashi...), this bibliography serves as a means to think when it brings together works by theorists and critics of the image, to see when it showcases the works gathered in exhibition catalogs that, both in France and internationally, have revisited the material evolutions of the medium, and to feel when it offers an incursion into books by artist-photographers particularly attentive to the transcription of sensations enabled by their authors' material explorations."

The carte blanche offered to Héloïse Conésa is illustrated in three categories. Theoretical books, such as Manifeste pour une post-photographie by Joan Fontcuberta (2022, Actes Sud) and Marc Lenot's thesis, Jouer contre les appareils (2017, Editions photosynthèses); catalogs of some of the most important exhibitions in the history of photography, such as What is a photograph? (2014, International Center of Photography, New York, Prestel Publishing), La mémoire du futur: dialogues photographiques entre passé, présent et futur (2016, Coédition Noir sur Blanc/Musée de l’Élysée), and the rare catalog of the exhibition Les Immatériaux, which took place in 1985 at the Centre de création industrielle (1985, Centre Georges Pompidou); and finally, monographs, including Photograms and Negatives (Thomas Ruff, 2015, Gagosian/Rizzoli), Harmony of Chaos (Renato D’Agostin, XX, the(M) éditions), and Laure Tiberghien (2023, RVB books).

Her selection is highlighted alongside the BnF exhibition "Epreuves de la matière."