Located in the heart of the University City of Madrid, the Casa de Velázquez, a French institution inaugurated in 1928, was created to host artists and researchers in residence.

During his residency at the Casa de Velázquez between 1993 and 1994, photographer Max Armengaud focused his gaze and his lens on the place and its inhabitants.
Thirty years later, between 2023 and 2024, he returned for a new series of photographs, following the same protocol. The portrait of the institution is a portrait of those who live and work there. Everyone is represented: the staff, the management, the residents, and the scholarship recipients… The photographer captures the intimate connections that are forged between the space and those who inhabit it.
To fully capture the spirit of the place, the artist meticulously explored the various spaces of the Casa: interiors and exteriors, public and private, from the most visible to the most secluded. Each subject is given equal weight. A strong sense of unity emerges, affirming the institution’s enduring presence. The portraits, exclusively in black and white, alternate with photographs of the premises, the most recent of which are in color, a medium that has only appeared in Max’s work for about fifteen years.

Marie-France Hirigoyen est psychiatre et psychothérapeute spécialisée en thérapie
familiale. Elle a publié entre autre, Le Harcèlement moral : la violence perverse
au quotidien (Syros) et Séparations avec enfants : Conflits, violences, manipulations
(La Découverte).

Irène Théry est sociologue, directrice d’études à l’EHESS (au Centre Norbert-Elias,
à Marseille) et spécialiste du droit de la famille et de la vie privée. Parmi ses nombreuses
publications : Mariage et filiation pour tous : Une métamorphose inachevée (éditions
du Seuil) et Recomposer une famille : Des rôles et des sentiments (éditions Textuel).

Bruno Humbeeck est psychopédagogue et directeur de recherche au sein
du service des Sciences de la famille de l’Université de Mons. Il est l’auteur, entre autre,
de Les ressources de la résilience (PUF), Pour un finir avec le harcèlement scolaire
(Odile Jacob) et de Comment préserver les enfants lors d’une séparation (Mango).

Depuis bientôt quarante ans, Max Armengaud photographie des institutions. Parmi lesquelles l’Opéra de Paris, la Cité du Vatican, le château de Prague et la Casa de Velázquez, représentées grâce aux
personnes qui les habitent et les traversent. Son travail est porté par deux notions centrales : la permanence et la disparition. Il est l’auteur du livre Antichambre, publié en 2015 aux éditions Analogues, éditions pour l’art contemporain. Il a été professeur d’enseignement artistique à l’École
supérieure des beaux-arts de Marseille de 1999 à 2024.

Né à Rome en 1972, Marco Barbon vit en France depuis 2001. Depuis 2005,
il se consacre à une recherche artistique qui investit l’image photographique comme
zone de frontière entre la réalité et l’imaginaire, le document et la fiction. La nature
de la photographie comme trace ainsi que sa capacité à évoquer le hors-champ
et à figurer l’absence constituent le fil conducteur de ses derniers travaux. Auteur de
plusieurs monographies, ses photographies ont fait l’objet de nombreuses expositions
et publications dans la presse française et internationale. Son travail est représenté
par la Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière (Paris).

Le Soleil même la nuit explores the nature and forms of damaged or broken parental bonds through the testimonies of twenty-six parents from various socio-cultural and professional backgrounds, some of whom have not communicated with their children for months or even years. Photographer Marco Barbon depicts this family bond beyond the child’s absence, in a representation that parents have of themselves. Intimate texts written by mothers and fathers interact with the images through triptychs on fold-out pages, which modestly reveal this emotional space where emptiness remains, where past tenderness is the most precious of archives. This book does not limit itself to showing the suffering endured by parents; it also highlights the unconditional love that these mothers and fathers have for their children. Parental love is there despite everything, and it cannot be erased: it is a sun that shines with all its warmth even on the darkest night.

These photographs bear witness to the traces of a process of resilience, continuing beyond the images produced and perhaps also thanks to them. The book will be accompanied by texts by specialists (Irène Théry, Bruno Humbeeck, and Marie-France Hirigoyen) in the introduction and conclusion, as well as a text by Marco Barbon.
This photographic work is part of a broader project that will include audio documentaries, videos, short films, and transmedia exhibitions beginning in the fall of 2025 and continuing throughout 2026.

“Why do people judge us when they know nothing about us ?”

For eighteen months, Françoise Evenou immersed herself in the heart of the Bois de Boulogne, meeting trans women who prostitute themselves to survive. Intrigued by these women, dressed like beauty queens, sitting in front of their vans or standing on the pavements, Françoise Evenou decided to meet them. Coming from South America, they left everything behind for a better life, to live freely in the country of Human Rights. Yet five, ten, twenty years later, we find them in their New World… the Bois de Boulogne. More than thirty of these women agreed to speak out and be photographed. Ignored, insulted, despised, often assaulted, they found the strength to reveal themselves, to finally tell the world their truth and to bear witness to their dignity.

Through a series of poignant photographs and candid interviews, Françoise Evenou has chosen to tackle this sensitive subject by celebrating these women without hiding anything about their reality or the vioùlence of the world in which they live.

The Nature of Balances is a story built around a photographic investigation that Sylvain Gouraud conducted over a decade in agricultural circles.
It follows the thread that connects our ways of seeing to our ways of working the land, playing on the analogy between photographing and land grabbing. It attempts to connect the worlds of culture and agriculture.

The book is divided into three chapters entitled:
Seeing, Knowing, and Having.
Seeing: This first chapter describes our ways of seeing and the influence of aesthetics on agricultural practices.
Knowing: This second chapter immerses us in the need for farmers to make choices and in the way their knowledge is constructed, between scientific belief and esoteric pragmatism.
Having: This final chapter explores the consequences of a capitalist understanding of life through our relationship with agricultural machinery, land grabbing, and seed patenting.

The Nature of Balances presents a contemporary representation of the agricultural world, from its various practices to the way it shapes the land. It explores both the industrial and biodynamic aspects.