In France, since the seventies, the photography is the focus of much attentions. The appear exhibitions to enhance the medium and to legitimize it as artistic expression.Before being recognized by the museum institutions and being the object of a real politics on the part of State service, the distribution and the valuation of the photography returns to the photographers who create many places dedicated to the exhibition of the medium.In the eighties, the progressive empowerment of the field of the photography comes along with the appearance of a history and a critical discourse. At the beginning of the nineties appear the first exhibitions which present a photography similar to the contemporary artistic practices. The success of this production will become a reality in the next decade and will participate not only in the legitimization of the photography but also in the second reading of the art history.The exhibition is approached here as interface between four main actors of the world of the art: artists, makers, mediators and the public. It is also received as a “dispositif” in that it conveys discourses to establish artistic standards and to be a recognized as an authority.The study of more than thirty years of exhibitions allows us to follow the evolution of the discourses which accompanied the medium during its empowerment, but also to perceive the pathways of a cultural object in these various processes of legitimization.
The role of exhibitions in the valorization of the photography as artistic expression, in France from 1970 till 2005