Agnès Varda. Here and there, Paris-Rome

Villa Medici is honouring the photographic work of the artist and filmmaker Agnès Varda

From February 25 to May 25, 2026, the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici pays tribute to the photographic work of artist and filmmaker Agnès Varda with the first major retrospective dedicated to her in Italy. Here, the photographer and the filmmaker in Varda come into dialogue through 130 original prints, film excerpts, publications, documents, posters, set photographs, and objects that belonged to the artist.

The exhibition also brings together works by several other artists: Giancarlo Botti, Michaële Buisson, Alexander Calder, Martine Franck, Dominique Genty, JR, Liliane de Kermadec, Michèle Laurent, Claude Nori, Laurent Sully-Jaulmes, Robert Picard, Valentine Schlegel, Collier Schorr.

The exhibition route

At the heart of the exhibition is the courtyard-studio on rue Daguerre, a place of life, creation, and experimentation for Agnès Varda for nearly seven decades, inseparable from her work. Used as a photo studio, a photographic lab, and the venue of her first exhibition in 1954, it was later shared with her partner, filmmaker Jacques Demy. From this space, the beating heart of her universe, the exhibition then unfolds into the artist’s travel experiences in Italy, from Venice to Rome, through Renaissance villas and gardens and on film sets.

The photographs and film excerpts on display highlight her unconventional gaze, tinged with humor and singularity: from her early work in her Paris atelier to her first steps into cinema, which placed her close to the Nouvelle Vague, from images focused on women’s themes and those living on the margins to her travel reportages.

Agnès Varda had a deep connection with Italy, highlighted here through a selection of previously unseen photographs taken during two stays: in Venice in 1959 and again in 1963. She traveled to the lagoon city while scouting filming locations for La Mélangite (ou Les Amours de Valentin), a film that was never completed. Her photographs capture her discovery of Italy and her taste for the picturesque, playing with shadows and contrasts.

It was during this trip that she created one of her famous self-portraits in front of a painting by Gentile Bellini, humorously playing with the hairstyle that would later become her signature.

In May 1963, the French magazine Réalités commissioned her to photograph Luchino Visconti, newly awarded the Palme d’Or for The Leopard. She then headed to Rome with three cameras: beyond the celebrated director, Varda also crossed paths with Jean-Luc Godard, who was in the same period filming Contempt at the Titanus studios.

The exhibition, the result of extensive research, draws on Agnès Varda’s photographic archive, as well as the archives of Ciné-Tamaris, the production company she founded, now run by her children Rosalie Varda and Mathieu Demy.