#12 - Clément Chéroux, Director of Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson: On curating, archives and keeping a legacy alive

My guest today is the director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. Clément Chéroux is a French photography historian and curator who previously held senior curatorial positions at the Centre Pompidou, SFMOMA and MoMA in New York. We recorded this conversation live at Les Rencontres d'Arles, the photo festival that first mesmerized him decades ago, and where he studied photography himself before turning to research and curating.We talk about what a curator actually does, and why Clément insists he is not an artist even though he trained as a photographer. He tells me how a chance encounter on a train at sixteen, a photo exhibition installed inside the carriage, pulled him into this world, and why he chose quantity and research over making a single image at a time. We go into what it means to inherit the archive and the legacy of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck, why he left a chief curator position at MoMA to take on that responsibility, and how the decisive moment still matters in the age of AI and smartphones. He also shares the small archival find, a family photograph, that changed how he understood an entire body of work.If you're curious how the person behind some of photography's most important exhibitions actually thinks, this one is for you.What you'll learn in this episodeWhat a curator's actual role is between the artist and the audience, and why Clément believes a curator should never think of himself as an artistHow he decides when to push a photographer toward an idea and when to step back, and why trust takes time to buildThe story of the small family photograph in an archive that revealed a photographer's twin brother, and how it changed the reading of his entire body of workWhy he chose researching, collecting and curating over photographing himself, and how that choice was really about quantity versus a single imageWhy he isn't afraid of the sheer quantity of images we're overwhelmed with today, and what that has to do with malleability as the true nature of the mediumWhat it means to be the director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, why he calls it "keeping a language alive," and why he left a position as chief curator at MoMA to take it onWhy the decisive moment still matters in the age of AI and smartphones, and the one element of photography that attracts him mostAbout the guestClément Chéroux is the director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, a French photography historian and curator born in Paris in 1970. Before joining the foundation, he held senior curatorial positions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He earned a degree from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles and a PhD in art history from the Sorbonne, and has been awarded the Prix Nadar and the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit. He has curated numerous exhibitions and books on photography, including the first Henri Cartier-Bresson retrospective after the photographer's death, at Centre Pompidou in 2014.Free webinarWant to know what the photographers who keep growing actually do differently? In a free webinar, I walk you through the five patterns I see consistently in this podcast, in masterclasses and in my one-on-one mentoring, and how you can apply them yourself. Sign up here.Partner of this episodeCameranu Alongside creativity, photographers simply need the right tools, whether that's a new lens or a camera you can rely on during a client shoot. The specialists at Cameranu think along with you and give honest advice. Head over to cameranu.be and use code DDK10 for 10% off your next purchase.If this conversation gave you something, share it with another photographer who might need it too. And if you want to work on your own photography or your business, check out donkerekamer.com, that's where you'll find everything about mentoring, masterclasses and workshops.