PhotoSaintGermain-Jean Marquis

Jean Marquis, Arpenteur du quotidien

photographs, 1951-1983

In 1951, Robert Capa advised Jean Marquis (1926-2019), an actor and drama teacher, to consider photography. He had the eye. Three years later, he joined the Magnum Photos agency alongside Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Chim.

Edward Steichen, director of the Department of Photography at MoMA, spotted him and selected him for the exhibition The Family of Man (1955). Numerous retrospectives in institutions across France and abroad would follow.

Jean Marquis was there at the crossroads of History. He covered the bustle of Parisian streets, the social and artistic ferment, from the victims of repression at the Charonne metro station (1962) to the social unrest of May 1968. The press appreciated and published him, from Time to Life. Magazine covers multiplied: a former concentration camp deportee in a striped shirt for Life (1958), world star Brigitte Bardot for L'Express (1962).

Europe, Iran, Senegal, Algeria: Jean Marquis travelled as a special correspondent for the international press. In Lapland (1956), he reached the height of his art amidst the intimacy of the Sami people.

In 2011, Jean Marquis entrusted the distribution of his photographs to the Roger-Viollet agency, a collection of which originates from the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris. -Françoise Denoyelle, photography historian

This exhibition takes place within the framework of the PhotoSaintGermain festival. Organized in the heart of Paris, in the iconic Saint‐Germain‐des‐Prés neighborhood, PhotoSaintGermain is an annual festival dedicated to promoting photographic creation.

PhotoSaintGermain offers a free and freely accessible exhibition tour across a selection of museums, cultural centers, galleries, and bookstores on the Left Bank. This tour highlights a sharp and eclectic program designed by associated galleries, as well as several original exhibitions and novel projects imagined and produced by the festival.