Photography

Shoji Ueda (1913-2000): Une ligne subtile
Until March 30
Japanese photographer Shoji Ueda is famous for his curious dune tableaux—quixotic arrangements of characters against a desert backdrop. His other photographs are less known outside Japan. This exhibition aims to change that, revealing Ueda’s particular, streamlined aesthetic, which avoid the picturesque or anecdotal. €3-6.
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, 5-7, rue de Fourcy, Paris 4. Mº Saint Paul. 01 44 78 75 15. www.mep-fr.org

Paris en Couleurs des frères Lumière à Martin Parr
Until March 31

Rodin et la Photographie
Until March 2
August Rodin may have worked in clay, plaster and metal, rather than film, but he was acutely alive to the possibilities of photography. With 200 photographs on display, this exhibition explores the sculptor’s developing relationship to the infant medium—from using it to control the reception of his pieces, to viewing the images of the young pictorialists who came to his studio as complementary works of art in their own right. €4-6.
Musée Rodin, 79, rue de Varenne, Paris 7. Mº Varenne. 01 44 18 61 10. www.musee-rodin.fr

Saul Leiter
January 17 - April 13

Is photography art? The young Edward Steichen thought so. As a prominent member of the Photo-Secession movement, he dedicated his early career to promoting the idea. The group’s pictorialist approach took painting as its artistic ideal, and justified photography’s aesthetic status in reference to it. For Steichen, this paradigm sustained a creative identity, but, as this retrospective at the Jeu de Paume demonstrates, prevented him from exploring the medium's separate possibilities.

Photoquai - 1st biennale des images du monde
Until November 25
Parisians can catch a glimpse of foreign climes at the first Biennale of World Images, a new festival dedicated to non-western photography and multimedia. The work of over 70 photographers from over 40 countries is on display at the Musée du quai Branly and outside it along the Seine, as well as at several partner venues. €6-8.50.
Musée du quai Branly, 37, qui Branly, Paris 7. Mº Bir Hakeim. RER Pont de l’Alma. 01 56 61 70 00. www.quaibranly.fr

Helen Levitt
Until December 23
Helen Levitt has been described as New York’s “visual poet laureate” thanks to her ability to transform the commonplace moments of city life into unique dramatic episodes. This exhibition unites a selection of her photographs taken between 1930 and 1980, including some rare images from her trip to Mexico. €3-6.

Bodies. Dead ones. A relentless series of flat horizontals, splayed out: ungainly limbs poking out of stairwells, inert mouths kissing the sidewalk. Welcome to New York as envisaged by Arthur Fellig, who, as a freelance press photographer in the 1930s and 40s, chronicled the dramas of the city night: gang warfare, fires, accidents and, above all, murder. “Murder was my job,” he once said. It was a work he pursued obsessively, based in his car with its improvised darkroom in the trunk and short-wave radio tuned into the police frequency. His alacrity in responding to these callouts—he often beat even the detectives to the scene—earned him the nickname Weegee, from Ouija.