Madeleine de Sinéty's prolific archive revealed at Jeu de Paume

The Jeu de Paume in Paris presents 'Madeleine de Sinéty: A Life', a chronological survey of the French photographer's work, running from June 12 to September 27. The exhibition, curated by Quentin Bajac and Jerôme Sother, draws from a vast archive of 33,280 color slides and 23,076 black-and-white negatives made between 1972 and 1982 in Poilley, northern France, plus later work. De Sinéty, born in 1934 to an aristocratic family, died in 2011 at age 77. She focused on vanishing worlds: urban gentrification (Montparnasse, Paris; Meatpacking District, New York), rural life (northern France, Maine), and laborers (steam railwaymen, farm laborers, greengrocers, butchers). She worked extensively in color when black-and-white was dominant. The show debuted at the Château de Tours in December 2024. De Sinéty's son Peter helped ship a storage container of her work from the US, where she lived from 1980. She rarely exhibited during her lifetime; one exception was a 2011 show at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. Her journals, written in French with anthropological detail, are also displayed. Sother noted she never organized her archive, feeling pressure to keep making work.