Gregory Halpern Showcases the Maison Niépce at FUJIKINA Arles 2025
During FUJIKINA Arles 2025 (July 8–August 31, 2025), the Fujifilm x Magnum Photos collaboration unveiled the project “A World in Color,” an exploration of Magnum’s color archives, digitized in medium format using the GFX100 II.
The installation included a new work by Gregory Halpern, Shadow Collection, created at the Maison Niépce.
On the occasion of the Bicentennial of the invention of photography, American photographer Gregory Halpern, a member of Magnum Photos, visited and photographed the Maison Niépce.
He thus became the fourth artist to work in this iconic location, following Paolo Roversi, Daido Moriyama, and Janine Niépce, in the footsteps of the inventor Nicéphore Niépce.
Gregory Halpern’s Artistic Approach
G. Halpern explains: “I wanted to begin where photography was born: in the home of Nicéphore Niépce. I spent two days alone in that house, and for much of that time, I found myself opening and closing the shutters to adjust the light entering the rooms. In those quiet moments, I began to imagine Niépce’s window as the first viewfinder, the house itself as a vast and primitive camera obscura.”
He adds: “Two hundred years after Niépce’s invention, the burning desire to hold time in our hands remains a mysterious impulse, an aspiration so powerful that it precedes language and defies logic. We understand the mechanics of photography—shutter, sensor, file—but there remains something extraordinary in what photographs do and in the way we use them.”
The Bicentennial of the Invention of Photography
The Bicentennial commemorates the importance of this founding gesture: bringing light into history and giving birth to a medium that, for two centuries, has shaped art, science, and the way we see the world.
In dialogue with Gregory Halpern, this exhibition reminds us that every image created today—documentary, artistic, or socially engaged—finds its roots in Niépce’s patient and visionary invention.
It was in Burgundy, in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, in his family home, that Nicéphore Niépce produced between 1816 and 1832 the first permanent images in history, including the famous View from the Window at Le Gras (1827).
Two centuries later, this unique site remains the original witness to the photographic adventure.
The Bicentennial pays tribute to this major invention—at once scientific, artistic, and cultural—and highlights the exceptional value of the Maison Niépce: the only place in the world where the original spaces used to create the first photograph can still be seen.
The Presence of Spéos
As the managing institution of the Maison Nicéphore Niépce, officially designated a “Maison des Illustres,” the photography school Spéos was present at the opening and conference with Gregory Halpern.
The Spéos Group is proud that this historic site continues to serve as a platform for demanding and innovative projects, in dialogue with photography’s rich heritage.
> Read the article on the Magnum website
Practical Information
The Maison Nicéphore Niépce, the historic birthplace of photography, is open to the public every summer, from July 1 to August 31, daily (except Tuesdays) from 10am to 6pm.
> More practical information
