Bodies, animals, masks, sculptures, myths and a constant tension between beauty and unease: for more than two decades, Camille Vivier has created photographic worlds that resist easy categorisation. Her images move between fashion and art, reality and dream, physical presence and surreal staging. Women become heroines, animals become symbols, and still lifes evolve into enigmatic narratives filled with tension and poetry.
Now, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris is dedicating its first major retrospective to the French photographer. Although Camille Vivier herself playfully downplays the term in an interview with AnOther Magazine: "It's a sort of retrospective, but not really because I'm not that old..." Curated by Victoria Arescheva, the exhibition brings together approximately ten series and nearly 100 works spanning 25 years, including silver gelatin and digital prints, Polaroids, as well as new works created specifically for the exhibition. The show runs from 10 June to 13 September 2026.
Since the beginning of her career, Camille Vivier has operated at the intersection of fashion photography and independent artistic research. After studying at the École supérieure d’art de Grenoble and Central Saint Martins in London, she began working as an assistant at the legendary Purple magazine in the late 1990s. Alongside her editorial work, she developed a distinctive photographic language that has established her as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary French photography.
Her work has appeared in i-D, Dazed & Confused, AnOther Magazine and The New Yorker. At the same time, she has created campaigns and commissioned projects for brands including Stella McCartney, Martin Margiela, Cartier, Eres, Kenzo, Dior and Hermès.
Bodies and still lifes have always been central to Vivier's practice. A particular focus lies on the female body and its many forms of expression. Her subjects are often women who challenge or redefine conventional notions of beauty, strength and femininity. Among them are bodybuilders such as Sophie, Tjiki and Deborah, featured in visual narratives where power, identity and vulnerability coexist.
Equally important throughout her work is her fascination with animals. Horses, frogs, snakes and birds frequently appear in her photographs. Vivier is particularly interested in their symbolic resonance and their role as a bridge between myth, nature and human imagination.
The retrospective also highlights Vivier's fascination with the uncanny and the ambiguous. Her protagonists enter mysterious relationships with objects, sculptures and constructed environments. Monumental public artworks exist alongside references to the biomechanical visions created by H. R. Giger for Alien. Within this space between the animate and the inanimate, flesh and matter, beauty and disturbance, Vivier has developed the singular visual language for which she has become internationally recognised.
CAMILLE VIVIER
10 June - 13 September 2026
Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP)
5/7 rue de Fourcy, 75004 Paris