Sophie Ristelhueber
Over the past thirty years, Sophie Ristelhueber has been reflecting on land and its history, developing a singular approach to the ruins and traces left by men in places devastated by war or natural and cultural disasters. Standing away from classic photo-reportage, she focuses instead on exposing the facts and the imprint of history on bodies and landscapes. She makes wounds and scars visible, which she exposes as the real memories of the “facts” of history.
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Far from classical photojournalism, she works as a true “history painter,” as the art historian Thomas Schlesser writes, inscribing photography within a wholly pictorial temporality. Indeed, her work is not situated in the realm of current events but in that of history, whose imprint she reveals on landscapes as well as on bodies, making their wounds and scars visible.
While photography remains her preferred medium, Sophie Ristelhueber upends its codes to create fully-fledged visual artworks, playing with the material and format of the image, its status, its frame, and its deployment in space. In 2024, Galerie Poggi dedicated What the Fuck! to her, an iconoclastic exhibition bringing together her most emblematic works, displayed both on the wall and on the floor. A gesture of revolt made all the more striking by the fact that it comes from an artist whose reserve and discretion have always ensured the radical nature of her work. In 2025, just after receiving the prestigious Hasselblad Award, Sophie Ristelhueber is celebrated at Paris Photo with a monumental installation on a wall nearly forty meters long, bringing together around a sixty works.
Her work has been presented in numerous international institutions, including MoMA (New York, US), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, US), ZKM (Karlsruhe, GE), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, US), The Power Plant (Toronto, CA), Tate Modern (London, GB), the Imperial War Museum (London, GB), the Johannesburg Biennale, São Paulo Biennial, the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, the Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles, and in Paris at the MNAM – Centre Pompidou, the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, the Musée Zadkine, Musée Rodin, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAMVP), among others.
Sophie Ristelhueber’s works are held in many public collections, including MoMA – Museum of Modern Art (New York, US), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, US), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, US), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, CA), CNAP (Paris, FR), MNAM – Centre Georges-Pompidou (Paris, FR), the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris, FR), the Musée de l’Armée (Paris, FR), the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, GB), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris, FR), the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, FR), the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (FR), and various Fonds Régionaux d’Art Contemporain (Brittany, Upper Normandy, Lower Normandy, Corsica, PACA).
Works
News & Press
Exhibitions at the Gallery
The Last Museum
May 16 - August 2, 2025
Sophie Ristelhueber, What The Fuck !
Novembre 5, 2024 - February 1, 2025
The First Stone
October 13 - December 2, 2023
Ecce Homo
02 Jul. – 13 Aug. 2022
La Peur au Ventre
Jan. 25 – March 14, 2020
Sophie Ristelhueber, Sunset Years
23 Mar. - 3 May 2019
The Border is a State of Mind
October 13 – November 16, 2018
Sophie Ristelhueber, Solo Show
November 5 - December 10, 2016
Sophie Ristelhueber, Pères
May 17 - June 14, 2014
