“Parallel realities from different locations introduce conversations among the different landscapes – environmental, political, emotional and social – in which we live”. – Renate Aller
The official launch of the project will take place on August 19, 2023 on the occasion of the World Humanitarian Day.
“Dialogues on Humanity” is a traveling exhibition that brings together 20 photographs by international artists, with themes that we have identified around the humanitarian principles (independence, humanity, impartiality, neutrality). This exhibition is made to travel around the world, to be shown in streets or cultural centres and reach people from different cultures and world views.
The exhibition represents a new way to open a dialogue on humanitarian principles through photography. Confronted on an almost daily basis with stories and images of humanitarian crises around the world, we are convinced that a museum can and should take an active part in social debates and that the opportunity to present the work of photographers from around the world to discuss issues that concern us all offers a unique platform for this dialogue.
The photographs in this exhibition reflect on five themes:
Living & nature
resilience, landscape, taking care of the environment, one health
Home & intimacy
feeling safe, shelter, vital needs, food insecurity, domestic sphere
Hope & dignity
vulnerability, future, security, fragility, responsibility, memory
Digital & data
cloud, privacy, data protection, digital identities, AI
Fact & fiction
including the following concepts: mis-disinformation, trust, simulacrum, true or false, multiple realities
Presented by Photo Elysée, curated by Nathalie Herschdorfer, in collaboration with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), a branch of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), and in conversation with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
About Photo Elysée
Photo Elysée is one of the most important museums entirely dedicated to the photographic medium. Each year, we produce demanding exhibitions, distribute reference editorial content, conceive innovative events and offer events open to all.
Since its creation in 1985 as a “museum for photography”, Photo Elysée has been questioning the permanent reinvention of the medium through the great figures who have marked its history by imagining new ways of seeing or making people see, while revealing in a privileged way the emerging photography which, through unseen views, bears witness to the world of today and prefigures that of tomorrow. In other words: to cover all the subjects of photography, to discover them sometimes, and above all to make them rediscovered.
The museum’s collection of more than 1,200,000 phototypes covers the entire field of photography, from the first processes dating from the 1840s to the digital image. It includes many complete photographic collections or archives, including those of Sabine Weiss, Jan Groover, René Burri, Ella Maillart, Nicolas Bouvier, Charlie Chaplin, Gertrude Fehr, Hans Steiner and Olivier Föllmi.