The museum has chosen for this exhibition a new and little studied aspect of Tomi Ungerer's work: photography. With the help of a large collection of photographs, negatives and Ektachromes from his personal collections kept in the museum, we see the intimate and little-known relationship that the illustrator has maintained with this medium for the first time.

The artist became interested in photography in the 1960s and used it for purposes that were different, but always complementary. Photography served as a documentary basis for his drawings, as shown by his Canadian period in Slow Agony (1983) and Far Out isn't Far Enough (1983). He also experienced it as artwork in its own right, published as such in Photographies 1960-1990, where realism confronts absurdity. He rapidly integrated it into his graphic work, where it accompanied drawings for advertising projects and humouristic and satirical cartoons, as in the illustrations for Horrible (1960) and Clic-Clac (1989) inspired by surrealism. Or again it was assembled in photomontages, as in the series on the Warsaw ghetto (2008-2009). Your visit will introduce you to some 150 works by Tomi Ungerer, ranging from the 1950s to the 2010s.

This exhibition enjoys the exceptional support of Eurométropole de Strasbourg.

Exhibition Curator: Thérèse Willer, Head Curator, Musée Tomi Ungerer—Centre International de l’Illustration