“Act in your place, think with the world”. This quote by Martinique poet Edouard Glissant has been with me for several years. It was omnipresent in the preparations for the 2026 edition of the Rencontres de la jeune photographie internationale organized by the Villa Pérochon. But how do we put it into practice? An artistic direction is not meant to be the simple expression of a director’s tastes, but rather the expression of the issues of an era and a territory through a plurality of photographic perspectives that challenge us, forcing us to adopt a new, salvific distance, and perhaps to renew our well-established certainties.
The Villa Pérochon, a contemporary art photography center of national interest, promotes photography that is open to all aesthetics and engaged with the major societal and environmental issues facing our connected, interdependent societies. From April 18 to May 31, we invite you to visit 16 exhibitions in Niort, presented in a number of well-known and lesser-known heritage sites. A real highlight of emerging photography in France, but not only!

At the art center, a retrospective exhibition Troisième Nature is devoted to Grégoire Eloy, member of the Tendance Floue collective and guest of honor at Rencontres 2026. At the heart of the festival, eight emerging French and international photographers enjoy a privileged setting with a creative residency, a laboratory of ideas and a factory of possibilities, and a group exhibition, for the first time at the Musée Bernard d’Agesci. Several satellite exhibitions shed new light on some of the issues facing contemporary society: the continuation of the contrasting portrait of young people in Niort begun in 2025(Jeanne Lucas), a multi-disciplinary installation following a creative residency in the Marais Poitevin Regional Nature Park(Fusées collective), several protean exhibitions at the crossroads of photography and science question the gradual disappearance of material traces, archives and testimonies through which memory is formed and circulated(Élie Monferier), the inner landscape of our desires for performance and the limits of our own bodies(Maxime Riché) or the possible existence of extraterrestrial life and its supposed manifestations(Alexa Brunet). And since we have to dream, Dana Cojbuc ‘s landscape drawings and Georges Rousse ‘s geometries allow us to see the world from a new point of view, even on the scale of Niort’s smallest house, Maison Gaufrette!

At a time when occult forces are casually asserting their desire to take over our imaginations, it is our duty to reaffirm that, more than ever, public service culture and creative freedom have their rightful place at the heart of public debate. We modestly, but with conviction, assume our part in the edifice: creating society, creating common ground.

Philippe Guionie, Director of Villa Pérochon-CACP