Courtinat exhibition explores vulnerability through 80 photographs

French photographer Jean-Louis Courtinat’s exhibition This Concerns Us All opened at the Juhan Kuusi Documentary Photography Centre in Tallinn on September 15, ERR reported. The exhibition features nearly 80 photographs spanning Courtinat’s socially documentary work from the 1980s to the present.

For more than 40 years, Courtinat has photographed people who are often overlooked by society, including children undergoing cancer treatment, people nearing the end of their lives, caregivers and medical workers, homeless and impoverished people, abandoned children, prisoners and refugees.

“This exhibition is not only about those whom society tends not to notice. It is about all of us, because vulnerability is not an exception but part of being human,” exhibition curators Kristel Aimee Laur and Toomas Järvet said.

They said Courtinat’s photographs invite viewers to recognise something of themselves and their shared humanity in the people portrayed, rather than looking down on them with pity.

Courtinat received the Prix Niépce in 1991 and the Visa d’or des Solidarités award for his body of work at the Visa pour l’Image festival in 2025. He also took part in the major national photography commission Radioscopie de la France organised by France’s Ministry of Culture and the National Library of France.

His work is held in collections including those of the Centre Pompidou, the National Library of France, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and the Musée Réattu.

The French Ministry of Culture has selected the exhibition, curated by the Juhan Kuusi Documentary Photography Centre, for the official programme marking the 200th anniversary of photography. It is also the only event in Estonia included in the international anniversary programme.

This Concerns Us All will remain open at the Juhan Kuusi Documentary Photography Centre until January 3.