The Xippas Gallery is pleased to announce that the photograph Untitled (The Characters with Elzbieta Josade), 2023, by Valérie Jouve, has been acquired by Frac Sud – Cité de l’art contemporain.

This work was part of Du Temps, un souffle (Time, a Breath), Valérie Jouve’s recent solo exhibition held at Xippas Paris in 2024, featuring a selection of new black-and-white works created over the past year using a large-format camera. These photographs revisit key themes in Jouve’s artistic approach, exploring the intricate and often fragile relationships between human beings and their environments, whether urban or natural. Her images, marked by a profound sense of rhythm and presence, oscillate between documentary precision and poetic resonance, offering viewers a contemplative pause, a breath suspended in time.

Art historian Michel Poivert describes Jouve’s work as a visual fable and a political gesture, capturing sacred presences and timeless rituals that reveal our shared longing for reconnection, with the living, with memory, and with the world around us. Far from idealism, her photography bears witness to a delicate balance, rooted in emotion, history, and the enduring power of place.

We are proud that this important piece will now become part of the public collection of Frac Sud.