A journey through stone and light: the Conciergerie's magnificent photo exhibition unveiled

Photographer Ahmet Ertuğ lets us admire exceptional monuments through his photographs, presented in the exhibition "Voyage dans les pierres et la lumière", to be discovered at the Conciergerie from February 9 to May 20, 2024.

Castles, monuments, historic libraries: in France, we're blessed with some remarkable heritage treasures. Other wonders lurk just about everywhere in the world; unfortunately, it's often not possible to circumnavigate the globe to go and admire them. Fortunately, artists like Ahmet Ertuğ are there to immortalize these places, and help us discover them.

The Turkish photographer has surveyed the roads and cities of France and Italy, in search of architectural masterpieces. Theaters, libraries, spiritual sites and seats of power, he pushed open many doors to unearth the beauty hidden behind these walls. The result is Voyage dans les pierres et la lumière, presented at the Conciergerie in Paris from February 9 to May 20, 2024.

The exhibition brings together twenty monumental photographs, allowing us to admire the most beautiful places in France and Italy. Serving as a showcase for these shots, the Conciergerie lends a little more grandeur, a little more majesty to these heritage treasures.

Ahmet Ertuğ is both architect and photographer. The artist has a keen eye for detail, and a taste for the spectacular. This combination plays a big part in his passion for monuments: he has traveled to the four corners of the world to admire and immortalize these sites. But the artist is demanding: for Ahmet Ertuğ, the value of a monument is defined according to three criteria: durability, utility and beauty.

Armed with his camera, and using long-exposure techniques, Ahmet Ertuğ captures the smallest details of his chosen sites, so that every particularity is preserved in memory.

The exhibition at the Conciergerie, on the other hand, focuses on twenty specific locations, twenty monuments that have amazed the artist... And all visitors. These include the Pantheons in Rome and Paris, the Olympic Theatre in Vicenza, the library of the Assemblée Nationale in Paris, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Villa Farnese, the façade of San Marco in Venice, the staircase of the Château de Chambord...

These exceptional shots marvel at their colors, the symmetry of the buildings and the surprising decorations they display. If some of these places are familiar to us, we'll be amazed to discover others whose existence and beauty we didn't even know existed.

A beautiful exhibition that makes you want to travel! Don't missAhmet Ertuğ's workat the Conciergerie.