Courtinat’s social photographs put humanity first

French social photographer Jean-Louis Courtinat’s work is driven by a desire to make the world better, ERR writes in a review of his exhibition “This concerns us all” at the Juhan Kuusi Documentary Photo Centre. The review was first published in Sirp.

The exhibition features about 80 photographs made over Courtinat’s 40-year career. His subjects include people in hospitals, homeless shelters, social hotels and Romanian orphanages. It is open through January 3, 2027.

One black-and-white photograph shows a child and a woman lying opposite each other on a bed. The woman strokes the child’s head with one hand and holds the child’s hand with the other. The caption identifies them as Nabil and his nurse at Institut Curie in Paris in 1990. The image conveys a profound bond.

Courtinat’s photographs are full of beauty and warmth, but their importance lies less in their aesthetic qualities than in his wish to use them to improve the world. A video interview recorded in 2024 is also part of the exhibition. In it, Courtinat recalls photographing children with cancer in the 1990s, when hospitals still had enough staff. It was a time, he says, when hospital workers had time for humanity.

In conversations with Bertrand Éveno, Courtinat has discussed how he became a photographer. He began with a second-hand Zenit camera without a light meter and used 35 mm and 28 mm lenses. Working without a light meter taught him to judge light by eye, while the wide-angle lens forced him to overcome his shyness and get close to the people he photographed.

That closeness is evident in the pictures, which convey personal, trusting relationships. Courtinat sometimes spent years in places such as hospitals and homeless shelters. At first, he might go a long time without taking a photograph: bringing out the camera inevitably turns him from a participant in the moment into an observer, changing the relationship.

The photographs address social hardships without trying to force sympathy from the viewer. They show humanity, warmth, beauty and, at times, humour. In one image from the children’s cancer ward, a young patient with hospital tubes helps a close friend get dressed. In another, a small boy named Denis raises his hands towards the sky, wearing headphones, while a doll beside him strikes the same pose. The focus is not on illness but on humanity.

Some series tell their stories through images alone; others also rely on accompanying texts. People photographed in a social hotel sometimes share their personal histories. Michelle says her childhood was marked by beatings and humiliation. Although doctors want to place her in a psychiatric hospital, she refuses: “I am still a human being.” In her portrait, belongings fill her room so densely that there is barely space to move.

Another photograph shows Patricia, a transgender woman who says she has spent her life under the gaze of others, a gaze that paralyses her like snake venom. Unable to find her place in society, she says she is fighting with all her strength against suffocating loneliness. She simply wants to survive.