Jean-Claude Figenwald, Miam, Atlanta, 2002
EN ⭢ FR
Le Séchoir, Mulhouse
6 juin - 5 juillet
samedi et dimanche de 14h à 18h
Brunch d’ouverture le dimanche 7 juin à 10h30
This retrospective exhibition traces the five-decade career of photojournalist Jean-Claude Figenwald. After growing up in Mulhouse, he moved to Paris and became a staff reporter, working for various magazines while continuing his personal projects. His photographs reflect a relentless and personal gaze on reality, attentive to people, the environment, society, and current events. This photographer’s professional and personal journey has taken him, over nearly fifty years, from the intimacy of his Parisian street to the wider world. An uninterrupted journey that has yielded images on a multitude of subjects.
Exhibition organized in partnership with Mulhouse Art Contemporain
A self-taught photographer, Jean-Claude Figenwald learned photography at the Gamma and Magnum agencies in the mid-1970s. His first assignment was for the L.A. Times, for which he photographed fashion shows in the early 1980s. A recipient of the Air France-City of Paris Fellowship in 1983 and a freelancer for the Associated Press in Paris, he joined L’Express to cover political, economic, and cultural life in Paris and throughout France. Gérard Rancinan hired him at his agency to produce magazine-style reports abroad, after which he joined Disney to document the construction of the future Marne-la-Vallée park. In the mid-1990s, he worked for a new generation of magazines—Citizen K, L’Optimum, Glamour, Idéat, GQ, and Milk—which gave him the opportunity to travel the world while developing an original photographic style. He completed a residency in 2002–2003 at La Filature in Mulhouse for an exhibition on community gardens. He is also the author of a book, Comme il m’a été donné. Mes vies de photographe (As It Was Given to Me: My Lives as a Photographer), published by Médiapop in May 2026.
Jean-Claude Figenwald, New-York, 1981
Jean-Claude Figenwald, Russie, 2002