Art director, publisher and curator Robert Delpire is a self-styled "presenter of pictures", working tirelessly to bring the art of photography to the widest possible public.

Delpire & Cie ("Delpire & Co.") presents documents, illustrations, books and magazines that trace the career of the self-styled montreur d'images Robert Delpire, together with photographs (new and vintage prints) by the personalities he promoted, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka. As a 23-year-old medical student with a fascination for the arts, Delpire created Neuf, an art review for medics featuring work by Breton, Prévert, Miller, Picasso, Michaux and Sartre. In the 1950s, he published Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Doisneau and Bischof, and the first (1958) edition of Robert Frank's The Americans (in France, as Les Américains, with text by Alain Bosquet).

Delpire was the art director of the review L’Œil, and set up an advertising agency in the early 1960s. He published the ground-breaking Photo Poche series (reasonably-priced, small-format photography books), introducing the medium to a wider public.

The exhibition retraces Delpire's career as a creative publisher, art director, curator (notably as director of the Centre National de la Photographie, that he founded in 1982) and film producer, exploring his pivotal role in the history of photography. The Fondation d’entreprise Hermès is proud to support this celebration of the life of an inspired "presenter of pictures".