Jeanne LUCAS
Niort youth #2
To 31 May
“Coming back a year later meant accepting that nothing was set in stone. Some people have left, others have changed, and new ones have arrived. This exhibition is about that turning point: the moment when you become you, when you choose your path, your tastes, your struggles, and sometimes your departure. I continue to photograph Niort to understand why we leave it… and why we return.” Jeanne Lucas
Intimate portraits
This exhibition is the second chapter in a saga that began in 2025, when Philippe Guionie gave Jeanne Lucas carte blanche over a three-year period.
A year later, the youth of Niort has changed. Some teenagers have grown up, left to study, left town or left adolescence. Others have stayed, matured and asserted themselves. New faces have appeared, with their own dreams, doubts and anger. At an age when everything changes, when we choose our path, our tastes and our commitments, Jeanne Lucas continues to follow these intimate and collective trajectories.
With this new exhibition, the photographer continues her immersion into the daily life and intimacy of some fifteen young people aged 14 to 18 who live or go to school in Niort, “the insurance capital”. From bedrooms that have become too small, to places where people meet up to remake the world, from parties to silences, she documents a youth that is growing up fast, maturing earlier, questioning the world, politics, standards and its future.
This second exhibition shows a city as seen by those who pass through it at the precise moment when childhood is fading and adulthood is taking shape. Through this long-term artistic and documentary work, Niort-born photographer Jeanne Lucas pursues a sensitive dialogue with her own past. By following these teenagers over time, she questions their love-repulsion relationship with the town where they grew up, and observes how a generation in turn writes its own history of Niort.
Practical info
Exceptional opening
Biography
Jeanne Lucas, a Paris-based photographer originally from Niort, blends documentary and fashion to explore subjects that fascinate her. She strives for authenticity in her casting choices and artistic direction, blurring the boundaries between staging and reality.
After studying at the ETPA in Toulouse and the Gobelins in Paris, Jeanne forged her style by developing a singular style in which documentary and fashion photography are intertwined. In the studio, she meets her team and asserts a recognizable, sensitive and committed artistic signature.
In June 2025, she publishes her first photo book, Politique, published by Rue du Bouquet. The result of her graduation thesis, this long-term project on economic and sexual exchange in France was a finalist for the Prix des Libraires, and selected by the Club des DA to be exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in September 2025.
Her work has been published in numerous international magazines, including Le M du Monde, Madame Figaro, Gala and Vogue. and she collaborates with houses and brands such as Dior and Chanel.
Alongside fashion, Jeanne is pursuing a long-term personal documentary project, notably Jeunesse niortaise, which examines adolescence, identity and the relationship with the city, and is part of a socially and artistically committed approach. She is represented by Denise Agency.