La Gacilly celebrates the art of outdoor portraiture

La Gacilly – 11 July 2026: On the streets, in the gardens and on the walls of the town of La Gacilly in Brittany, faces are being given a particularly prominent place this summer. The 23rd edition of the photography festival, entitled “1826–2026: Photography, a French Adventure”, is dedicated to the two-hundred-year journey of the medium—and places portraiture, perhaps its most intimate form, at its centre.

Until 4 October, the village in the Morbihan department will become a freely accessible open-air gallery. Around twenty exhibitions take visitors through different eras, styles and conceptions of what a human face can reveal. What matters here is not an immediate effect, but a patient encounter: between the subject, the photographer and the public, who are invited to take their time while strolling.

Raymond Depardon contributes a documentary view of France and the world. His photographs possess a rare stillness, in which biography, landscape and social reality meet. Meanwhile, Jean-Marie Périer recalls the pop history and culture of the 1960s: his portraits of singers, musicians and film stars have become deeply embedded in the French visual memory.

Pierre et Gilles create a deliberately artificial, colour-saturated counterpoint. The artist duo combines photography and painting into carefully staged portraits that oscillate between Baroque, pop and queerness. Their figures sometimes appear like saints of an exceedingly glittering present. That is precisely where their appeal lies: the images display their own fascination without denying melancholy.

The historical arc extends to Nadar, whose works from the 19th century were decisive in shaping photographic portraiture. Works by Willy Ronis, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Vincent Munier, Claudine Doury and Sebastião Salgado are also presented. The result is not a museum-like genealogy, but a polyphonic journey through French photography—from studio photography to reportage, from the iconic to the incidental glance.

The festival is curated by Cyril Drouhet. The anniversary year refers to Nicéphore Niépce and his first photographic experiments in 1826. However, La Gacilly does not tell this story as a chronicle of technical success. Instead, the focus is on the question of how photography creates intimacy, preserves memories and makes visible people who might otherwise have remained beyond the frame.

The outdoor setting gives the exhibition its own lightness. Among trees, slate façades and village squares, the large-format photographs lose the sheltered space of the museum—and regain everyday life. Thus, in La Gacilly, portraiture does not become a silent icon, but an encounter at eye level.