On the occasion of Les Nuits Photo 2022, Alexe Liebert, the artistic director of the festival, offered us a selection of photographic films from previous editions. She explains her choices...

Harry Gruyaert has a rare ability to compose colour. He avoids the pitfalls of the genre by creating nuanced images, with a feeling of loneliness, of tender irony, of the “beauty of ugliness”. A form of “Belgitude”, to echo the words of Aimé Césaire. But Harry Gruyaert is not “just” Belgian-Flemish; here we understand that his life abroad afforded him a clearer view of Belgium. We also understand that this silent hypersensitive is inhabited by photography.

In his laboratory in Perpignan, Carlos Barrantes has perfectly mastered the art of historical photographic processes, all those monochrome techniques that require incredible precision, specific tools, and a knack. The printer's know-how does not stop there. Carlos also reveals his photographic work, closely linked to the processes he uses. And by observing these variations, we can see how each method tells its story.

In his studio, at home in the Lower East Side, Saul Leiter talks to director Tomas Leach about his family history, his first camera, his beginnings in fashion, and what drives him. A master of colour, he begins taking slides when everyone else is focused on monochrome. His painter's eye leads him towards photographic abstraction, an eye that conveyed an incomparable sense of colour and composition.

Against all odds, Dolorès Marat quietly built a personal body of work on the fringes of fashion and the world of contemporary art. Timeless images, evanescent but persistent, like so many interior landscapes bathed in solitude. Working through an alphabet primer from Avignon (at the blue hour) to Ventoux, from the apartment-studio to hanging the "Cascades" exhibition, the director follows in the footsteps of the frugal Dolorès, shy yet bold, always sincere.

In Bordeaux, in the mid-seventies, Molinier's lifeless body was found on his bed. This infamous erotic artist had already staged his own death twenty years previously when he photographed himself stretched out on the same bed. A free-spirited individual attracted to women's legs and stockings, he fascinated André Breton but offended a great many people in his day. Unveiled in the privacy of his bedroom, this mysterious character's work is revealed through his accessories, photomontages, voice and escapades.