Against the gilded stucco and Baccarat chandeliers of the Hôtel de Ville’s ceremonial rooms, Yann Arthus-Bertrand pits the radical economy of his painted backdrop — an inheritance from Nadar and Irving Penn. A few lights. A digital camera. Nothing more. “Photography is a minor art. A portrait should never be complicated,” he says.
In the 1970s, in Kenya, he was photographing lions. By 1990, he had set up a studio in the aisles of the Salon de l’Agriculture, drawn by “the bond that unites man and animal.” Calves, cows, and pigs passed before his lens. The tarp, already used in New Guinea, became his signature. It creates “an egalitarian space, where everyone is entitled to the same light.”
His series “Beasts” inspired new variations: “Dogs,” then “Cats,” and finally “Horses.” Alongside these, the photographer discovered “an immense pleasure in photographing people — their pride, their modesty, their truth.” This shift from animal photography to human portraiture drew some surprised reactions.
From the pig tarp to the Élysée Palace
When he arrived at the Élysée to photograph the President, an officer of the Republican Guard, appalled, asked: “You’re going to photograph the President in front of your pig tarp?” François Mitterrand replied with a smile: “Let’s go, I’m the beast of the day…” before teasing him: “So you’ve moved from four-legged creatures to two-legged ones?”
A compulsive worker, the mustachioed photographer became a true workhorse of the image. For his series of French portraits, he crisscrossed the country with his team for two years, between 2023 and 2025, visiting 75 towns and villages and producing an average of 300 photographs per day.
An industrial rhythm, a pace of willing exhaustion. “We’re far from a Raymond Depardon photographing with a large-format camera,” he admits. “Ours is more like an assembly line.” For two more weeks, he’ll still be in his improvised photo studio every day, welcoming anonymous visitors who come to have their portrait taken — free of charge — at the exhibition site. “We’ve already done 2,000, and it’s not over.”
Saïd, Atika, the Renards: today’s France
The first links in this pharaonic project go back to 1993. That year, L’Express commissioned a series of portraits of French citizens for its anniversary issue. The photographer seized the opportunity, beginning with those around him: his postman, his baker, his grocer. Faces that reappear 32 years later in the book and exhibition “France, un album de famille.”
Saïd Boumayla, a grocer in Saint-Rémy-l’Honoré, poses with his 1993 portrait in hand — “still available, still smiling.” Atika Bouamri, a former supermarket employee, is photographed in 2025 with her children; she already appeared in 1993 alongside her grandmother Fatna. “The love between the granddaughter and her grandmother moved me then and still moves me now. That photograph is timeless,” says Françoise Jacquot, the photographer’s collaborator for the past 30 years.
The Renard family embodies this continuity. In 1993, Yann Arthus-Bertrand photographed Denise and Robert, market vendors. Then their son Michel, an organic farmer, in 2000, and his children in 2025 — three generations of growers before the same painted backdrop. “His daughter, Céline Renard, an organic farmer, followed in the footsteps of her grandparents and father and continues this beautiful legacy.”
Fifteen million volunteers
This image of a multicultural, optimistic France irritates some. “People say we live in a fractured, cynical country. That drives me crazy!” Arthus-Bertrand fumes. His photographs, he insists, prove otherwise. Jules Naminzo, 80, a sugar worker on Réunion Island, flanked by his grandchildren. Members of brotherhoods, sea rescuers, volunteers aiding unaccompanied minors — these portraits of families, biological or chosen, refute the very idea of a divided France.
“We saw 30,000 people. Not a single pain in the neck — just kind folks,” he says. Indeed, more than two-thirds of the images show groups: lawyers, yellow vests, hunters, nurses, environmentalists, volunteers. No loners. The exact opposite of the dominant political narrative. Yet there is no denial here of the individual tensions behind these images of a family album that carries the weight of a republic: 3.5 kilograms, 800 pages, nearly 1,000 photographs.
Hervé Le Bras, demographer at the EHESS, was tasked with transforming this florilegium of images into a reasoned census. Each portrait comes with detailed captions — statistical context, occupational shifts, intertwined social genealogies. Thus, the portrait of postal workers sits alongside an analysis of the decline of the French postal service. “The French prefer particular cases to statistics,” Le Bras explains with quiet conviction.
Basket weavers, framers, Marseille graffiti artists, flamenco dancers, influencers, windsurfers: 5,000 rare occupations from the census also find their place. The book pays special attention to the country’s 15 million volunteers. This fraternity — the least visible word in the republican motto — counterbalances the individualism of conventional statistics. “I focus on fraternity, which is also today’s reality: 15 million people volunteer, 5 million of them helping others. This country is incredible! We have to highlight those people.”
“Popular, not populist”
Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s photographic proposition is as timeless as his images. It hasn’t changed since the 1990s: “Come have your portrait taken — alone, with family, colleagues, friends, even an animal — bringing, if possible, an object, an instrument, or an outfit that speaks about you.” No restrictions. He even photographs opposing members of parliament side by side. “The only ones who annoyed me — and there weren’t many — were those who refused to be photographed together.”
On the seventh day of the exhibition, Pascale, from Chambon-sur-Lignon, in her fifties, poses before the tarp with her son Matis. Her shyness and Central France accent melt away in front of the camera. The portrait turns out beautifully. “You look wonderful, truly,” the photographer tells her warmly, visibly moved, as he signs her exhibition poster. Then he turns to his assistant: “Tighten on their faces, closer, even closer. You can never show faces enough.”
When confronted with critics who accuse him of feigned naivety, bluntness, commercial opportunism, or political lukewarmness, he shrugs. “I’m a popular photographer, not a populist one. Politics fuels division. Politicians fight among themselves, and all that ends up dripping down onto the people.” An ecologist but not a radical, a vegetarian but not a preacher, an avowed idealist. Yann Arthus-Bertrand stands by one single politics: that of the outstretched hand.
The exhibition “France, un album de famille” (France, a Family Album) is organized by the GoodPlanet Foundation at the Paris City Hall from Tuesday, October 22 to Sunday, November 2, 2025. Free admission, subject to availability, with registration at this link.
It is also a book, France, un album de famille, published by Actes Sud (€49.90), and a film, France, une histoire d’amour, premiering in theaters on November 5, 2025.
