Madeleine de Sinéty, A Life: The Retrospective Exhibition at the Jeu de Paume

The Jeu de Paume is presenting a retrospective of Madeleine de Sinéty's work, a photographer who captured rural daily life. The exhibition "Une vie" is on view from June 12 to September 27, 2026.

French-American photographer Madeleine de Sinéty is in the spotlight at Jeu de Paume: a major retrospective, the first devoted to the artist, is scheduled from June 12 to September 27, 2026. The exhibition Une vie brings together forty years of work and photographs, highlighting stories that have been overlooked, stories that have vanished.

Before fully dedicating herself to photography, Madeleine de Sinéty began her artistic journey in Paris in the mid-1960s, working as a fashion illustrator for magazines. A few years later, she discovers photography on her own and finds in it a privileged means to tell the world around her.

She turns her attention to the invisibles, to the overlooked: to rural workers whose way of life is slipping away. Farmers, railway workers, laborers, merchants, butchers, single women, people dependent on welfare... The artist captures their daily lives, their ordinary lives, which are too often ignored by other media and artists.

The photographer is deeply drawn to worlds on the verge of vanishing: changing cities, neighborhoods in flux, villages, and the traditions left behind by modernization. It is in the Breton village of Poilley that Madeleine de Sinéty undertakes her grand project: a collection of more than 50,000 images that document every facet of this small rural milieu in the 1970s. Work in the fields and at home, village celebrations, the turning of the seasons, interiors of houses: this colossal body of work captures with remarkable precision a world threatened by social and economic upheaval.

This bustling retrospective showcases a richly varied body of work, with a strong emphasis on color photography. The black-and-white prints on display were created by Madeleine de Sinéty herself during her lifetime, while the color images—drawn from slides kept in her archives—were specially printed for the exhibition. Presented this way, the show invites a fresh reading of her art, placing viewers in intimate proximity to the life scenes she captured.

The route is also punctuated by immersive installations: in several places, projections conjure up memories, while a space fitted with headphones offers an auditory experience that deepens the discovery of the photographer's work and her universe.

Madeleine de Sinéty has a lifelong fascination with steam trains and the daily life of railway workers. Her archives also include images of the old Montparnasse neighborhood, before this artist district was erased by the station’s overhaul and the construction of office blocks.

In the United States, where she lives with her husband, she keeps tending to her interests. She shoots weddings, school ceremonies, demonstrations, markets, workers gathering at dawn, and vendors delivering their goods. The rural world, both in France and across the Atlantic, unfolds before her lens with poetry and fragility.

A certain tenderness runs through the entirety of her work. Her images, deeply human, invite you to linger over every detail, to parse the gestures, the gazes, and the interactions that shape these scenes of everyday life. We find ourselves returning again and again to the photographs, drawn by the richness of their silent narratives and by the thoughtful care she brings to her subjects.

The exhibition also rounds out its narrative with excerpts from the artist's diary, shedding light on her view of the world and the lives that so enthrall her. It proceeds in chronological order, tracing Madeleine de Sinéty's evolution—from her tentative beginnings to her most celebrated series.

A guardian of memory and fading traditions, Madeleine de Sinéty is once again brought into the spotlight at the Jeu de Paume this summer. A never-before-seen, sensitive and bustling retrospective, not to be missed.

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