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La Contemporaine devotes its opening exhibition to Elie Kagan (1928-1999), an engaged photographer and tremendous archivist of his time, in the building designed by the Atelier Bruno Gaudin. This exhibition is founded on more than 200,000 images – negatives, prints, contact sheets and slides – accompanied by professional archives entrusted to La Contemporaine by the family of the photographer in 1999.

Self-taught, passionate about the social and political world, willingly provocative, Elie Kagan documents meetings, demonstrations, cultural events and political rallies. His work provides a historical and visual archive of French political, intellectual and cultural life from the 1960s to the 1990s. Engaged photoreporter, he takes part in all the manifestations of a rich era. He would be one of the rare photographers to capture the police violence perpetrated against Algerians during the night of October 17, 1961.

Exhibiting the work of an independent press photographer also means showing the daily life of a photoreporter from the 1960s to the 1990s as well as an image material marked by its uses and circulations: magazines, press, journals, posters, books and brochures… The exhibition layout refers back to the various interpretations of Elie Kagan’s work basing on its reception, from the militant production to the committed photographs of memorial claims. It also allowes to discover an unknown dimension of his work. Witness of his time, Kagan loves strolling through Paris whose urban and sociological transformations he captures. Yet it’s an existential report to the photography that lets itself be seen: a way of living, day-to-day, carried by meetings, hitches or surprises of everyday life…