Agnès Varda. De-Ci De-Là, Paris-Rome

The Académie de France in Rome – Villa Medici dedicates to Agnès Varda (1928–2019) the first major retrospective in Italy devoted to her photographic work, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Paris–Rome twinning. The exhibition presents the complexity of a central figure in twentieth-century visual culture, whose work moved freely between photography and cinema, autobiography and collective storytelling.

The exhibition unfolds along a wide-ranging itinerary that brings into dialogue the two sides of Agnès Varda’s practice, highlighting how her photographic work profoundly shaped her cinematic language. Through more than 130 works – including original prints, film extracts, publications, documents, posters, still photographs and personal objects – visitors can discover the construction of a gaze that is free, ironic and radically human.

The exhibition also brings together works by several artists presented in dialogue with Agnès Varda’s photographs and films: Giancarlo Botti, Michaële Buisson, Alexander Calder, Martine Franck, Dominique Genty, JR, Liliane de Kermadec, Michèle Laurent, Claude Nori, Laurent Sully-Jaulmes, Robert Picard, Valentine Schlegel, Collier Schorr.

The symbolic heart of the exhibition is post-war Paris, observed through the lens of the famous courtyard-studio on rue Daguerre, where Varda settled in the early 1950s. Transformed into a photographic studio, a laboratory and a shared living space, this site became the pulsating centre of her research. Photographs and film excerpts depict a city far removed from stereotypes, populated by artisans, passers-by, neighbours and anonymous faces. Works such as Cléo from 5 to 7 and Daguerréotypes reveal a Paris experienced from within, capable of reflecting emotions, anxieties and social change.

One section is entirely devoted to rue Daguerre, the physical and symbolic locus of Agnès Varda’s work. Here the artist staged her first exhibitions, took portraits, shot films and built a creative microcosm spanning decades of work. The courtyard-studio gradually became a garden-courtyard, a space open to experimentation and self-narration, eventually emerging as one of the poetic centres of works such as The Beaches of Agnès.

Another fundamental axis of the exhibition is Agnès Varda’s constant attention to women, ordinary people and marginal lives. From the 1950s onwards, her photography and cinema questioned the ways in which bodies and identities are represented. The exhibition foregrounds her sensitive and concrete feminism, intertwined with a broader reflection on humanity, the dignity of everyday life and the transformations of society.

Continuing the Parisian narrative, the exhibition devotes a substantial focus to Agnès Varda’s Italy, presenting a selection of previously unpublished photographs taken during her stays in 1959 and 1963. Venice, Rome, Renaissance villas and gardens become sites of observation and visual experimentation, combining scenes of daily life, plays of light and graphic compositions. A significant group of works documents her relationship with Italian cinema: from the portrait of Luchino Visconti to her visit to the set of Contempt by Jean-Luc Godard, with images capturing Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance and Michel Piccoli.

Agnès Varda’s works are presented in dialogue with those of other artists who moved within her creative universe, including Alexander Calder, Martine Franck, JR, Valentine Schlegel and others. These encounters enrich the reading of her work, highlighting affinities, influences and exchanges within the vibrant cultural landscape of the post-war period.

Conceived by the musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris and realised after more than two years of research, the exhibition is based on Agnès Varda’s photographic archive and the archives of Ciné-Tamaris, the production company she founded, now directed by Rosalie Varda and Mathieu Demy.

Cover image: Agnès VARDA, Self-portrait, Bellini, Venice, 1959