Montmajour update(s)

Montmajour Abbey has always had a special relationship with photography. This dialogue intensified in the early 1990s, when the Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des Sites took over its management. At that time, several photographic commissions were given to artists, whose work was then presented as part of the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles.

The " Montmajour, mise(s) à jour " exhibition invites visitors to rediscover the work of several of these photographers - Père Formiguera, Humberto Rivas and Hugues de Wurstemberger - in dialogue with a contemporary work by Anna Katerina Scheidegger.

Produced in the early winter of 2025, her series renews our perception of the monument through a geometric and detailed approach , revealing new facets of the abbey and prolonging its mystery, "which will never end".

This exhibition was conceived in collaboration with Louis Mesplé, director of the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles in the early 1990s.

Humberto Rivas (1937-2009)

An Argentinian photographer, Humberto Rivas began working in a textile workshop at a very early age before devoting himself to drawing and painting. At the age of 22, he entered the Buenos Aires School of Fine Arts and chose photography as his main means of expression, under the influence of the great master Anatole Saderman.

In 1976, he fled the Argentine dictatorship and settled in Barcelona, where he joined the innovative image movements in Spain - notably around the magazine Nueva Lente - while continuing his quest for photographic objectivity inspired by Richard Avedon, August Sander and Alfred Stieglitz.

His portraits, of a rare intensity, are veritable human landscapes; his landscapes read like portraits. In 1993, as part of a photographic commission, he restored the Abbey of Montmajour to its authenticity of stone and light.

Winner of Spain's National Photography Prize (1997), Humberto Rivas's work is included in the world's leading museum and private collections.

Père Formiguera (1952 - 2013)

Catalanphotographer and writer Pere Formiguera is a major figure in contemporary Spanish photography. He is best known for his series devoted to family models, whose individual portraits he took year after year for a decade.

By applying this protocol to other groups - children, strangers, various communities - he has developed a profoundly humanistic body of work , a meditation on the passage of time, the persistence of beings and immobility as resistance to becoming.

In 1993, as part of a commission from the Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des Sites, associated with the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles, Formiguera photographedMontmajour Abbey. His images, in keeping with the place, assert its permanence in the face of the erosion of time: "We are here, and we will remain".

Recognised as one of Spain's top ten photographers, Père Formiguera has exhibited in numerous European museums and at MoMA in New York. His work is mainly housed at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona) .

Hugues de Wurstemberger (1955)

Hugues de Wurstemberger is a Swiss photographer who lives and teaches photography in Belgium. His series on the Swiss Guard, presented in 1985 at the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne, marked his entry onto the international photographic scene. He has always shied away from the spectacular, favouring discreet humanities and forgotten territories, regularly collaborating with NGOs and humanitarian associations. His documentary approach, imbued with respect and humour, transforms reality into poetry.

In the 1991 commission, his"Humour de pierre" series subtly combines theAbbey of Montmajourand the Château d'If, in a play of echoes between architecture, history and derision.

Winner of the Prix Niépce (1990), the World Press Photo and the Silver Award, Hugues de Wurstemberger is represented by the VU' agency .

Anna Katharina Scheidegger (1976)

Swiss artist and photographer Anna Katharina Scheidegger is a graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the Studio national des arts contemporains du Fresnoy in Tourcoing. After several artist residencies, she joined Casa de Velázquez in Madrid as an artist member.

Her work, a cross between photography, video andkinetic installation, explores the relationship between intimate memory and natural forces, between fragile equilibrium and mineral power. Works such as"Quelques gouttes d'éternité" (Le Fresnoy, 2020) bear witness to her sensitivity to time and the transformation of materials.

She has always been fascinated by the mineral world, and in the architectural strata of Montmajour she finds a natural echo for her"High Altitude" series (Rencontres d'Arles, 2007). In 2025, she won the Picto Lab / Expérimenter l'image residency for her project Fragile Warning Lights, inspired by bioluminescent marine plankton.