Lecture
What Can Photography Do? Photography, Art History, and Staging
Saturday, December 12, 2026Lecture by Laurent Genest
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a painter before becoming a photographer (…). From 1926 onward, he spent two years in the studio of the painter André Lhote, where he discovered a theoretical approach based on highly precise composition, geometry, and the Golden Ratio. Throughout his life, he maintained a strong interest in the composition and staging of his photographs, to which he added the elements of improvisation, chance, and spontaneity so cherished by the Surrealists. Using the example of Jeff Wall, the lecture will explore what photography can do, and how it can be just as intellectually engaged as painting. Jeff Wall, considered the founder of “staged photography,” creates extremely complex and subtle works that make precise references to Velázquez and Manet, while reassessing our relationship with images—and therefore with the meaning of art. Other works will lead us to the question of documentary photography, of which Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the best-known representatives worldwide.
About the speaker
Laurent GENEST
National lecturer and art historian. After studying art history and archaeology at the École du Louvre and Paris I–Sorbonne University, where he taught for several years, he initially pursued research into our contemporary relationship with works of art in general, and with reproductions of artworks in particular. He was also one of the founding members of the Critical Observatory of Digital Resources in Art History and Archaeology at the University of the Sorbonne, now hosted on the CNRS website (https://observatoirecritique.hypotheses.org/). He regularly organizes cultural trips to showcase France’s and other countries’ rich heritage, as well as museum visits. He is a member of ICOM (the International Council of Museums) and a corresponding member of the Académie d’Aix-en-Provence. He has published articles on the virtual museum in specialist journals, as well as a book on Istanbul’s Pera-Galata district (Promenade aux Champs-Elysées d’Orient, 2014). He also designs and leads public-speaking courses—in connection with art—for business schools and other organizations.