A Story of Sports

Sport and competition, highlighted in this year of the Olympics coming to France, offer a unique occasion to unearth rarely shown images that bring together photographers working on commission or pursuing personal projects, be they writer-photographers like Émile Zola, photojournalists like Guy Le Querrec and Renée Falcke, illustrators like René-Jacques or visual artists like Gladys.

Since the medium’s invention in the mid-nineteenth century, amateur and professional photographers have captured emerging sporting practices, beginning in the upper echelons of society. In the early twentieth century, leisure time entered the daily life of the masses; gymnasts, cyclists, ballplayers and fencers became recurring motifs in photographs. Some celebrate the pleasure of the athletic gesture, while others exalt the quest for precision that leads to high performance. Over time sport was democratised, and an industry was born. The quest for speed and power as absolute proof of excellence took its place in dedicated venues: stadiums and racing circuits. Depending on the sport being practised, a variety of framing and shooting conditions allow us to compare the subjects of these images, but also the changing relationship between the body and exercise. Here, the movements of the photographed athletes tell a story beyond the mere lists of winners of sporting competitions.

The product of a partnership between the Jeu de Paume, the MPP and the City of Reims, A Story of Sport is an opportunity to discover or rediscover the sports photography held in France’s national collections. It showcases a wide variety of approaches, gathering over two hundred prints by thirty professional and amateur photographers, from the 1890s to the 2000s.

The MPP, an archival service of the French Ministry of Culture, conserves over twenty-five million photographs dating from the origins of the medium to the present day. Since 2005, it has gradually established itself as a key player in the preservation of France’s photographic heritage. At a time when many photographers worry about the future of their work, the MPP has resumed an active policy of collecting in order to offer researchers, curators and the general public an insight into photographic creation in and from France.