“Les traversées d’Anita Conti — between documentary and poetry”: an exhibition by Seine Avenue

There are works that document the world, and others that imagine it.

Anita Conti’s work lies at the intersection of these two approaches. As France’s first female oceanographer, she spent her entire life observing, photographing, and writing, drawing on her direct and extensive experience of the sea. Long voyages alongside sailors at work, often in difficult conditions, shaped her practice and her thinking. She conveys the power of these experiences not only in her expedition accounts but also in her recently published poems (Anita Conti, poète, océanographe, Les Carnets du Dessert de Lune, 2025).

Similarly, her photographs reveal a documentary eye that is both sharp and sensitive. With care and delicacy, she observes the men, life on board, and the horizon, offering a unique testimony to the maritime world of the 20th century. The exhibition invites visitors to discover the poetry in the work of an exceptional woman, navigating through some thirty of her photographs, juxtaposed with her poems.

Entrance to the exhibition © Célia Lebarbey / Anita Conti developing her film in the fishnet storage room of the Newfoundland trawler Vikings; photographer unknown.

Sea journeys, photographic and poetic journeys…

Anita Conti’s unique vision of the world stems in particular from sailing, just as others’ stems from walking: a way of being in motion, ever-shifting, that creates a sensitive relationship with the world — and more specifically, with the sea. Her photographs both capture and reveal a unique way of seeing, driven by a perceptiveness that is both intense and delicate. Her poems, for their part, never completely detach themselves from concrete experience: they extend its gestures, its solitude, its daydreams, and the body’s memory. Bringing together photographs and poems, the exhibition offers a fresh interpretation of the oceanographer’s world, for whom observing, writing, and photographing stem from the same impulse. The horizon formed by the images traces a line — like a steady course — that allows the words to unfold, to flow, and to carry us further.

Visitors in the Quai de la Photo gallery, standing in front of photos and excerpts from poems by Anita Conti © Marion Briffod.

The free association of poetic fragments and images conveys a train of thought that moves forward in waves, in successive strokes, rather than through a linear progression. Nothing here is explanatory; everything rests on echoes, correspondences, and resonances. The dialogue between these two forms thus invites us to explore Anita Conti’s work as one would move across the water: following lines of force, movements that are at times unpredictable, and subtle shifts. This echo of navigation — in ways of being and acting — takes on its full meaning aboard a boat dedicated to photography. The exhibition invites visitors to share Anita Conti’s dynamic yet delicate approach to the aquatic world, a living environment also inhabited by humans and their livelihoods. Here, the image does not illustrate the text, any more than the poem serves as a caption for the photograph. It is in the gap between the two that something happens: a space where everyone can find their place, set sail, and dream.

A selection of Anita Conti’s photographs taken in the 1930s and 1950s, out of the approximately 40,000 she bequeathed, along with her archives, to the city of Lorient © Marion Briffod.

Arthur François, co-director of operations at Seine Avenue, and Marion Briffod, photographer and independent curator, curated this exhibition, with the assistance of Célia Lebarbey, communications manager at Seine Avenue. The exhibition was made possible thanks to the permission and support of Laurent Girault-Conti, the adoptive son and heir of Anita Conti, as well as the cooperation of the Musée de Fécamp (76): Les Pêcheries. This public institution in Normandy loaned a portion of the photographic prints on display. We would therefore like to express our gratitude to the museum, and more specifically to Ms. Nadège Sébille-Santiago, assistant director and collections manager, for her time and hospitality.

Les Pêcheries, a museum in Fécamp, and one of the basins in the Port of Fécamp © Célia Lebarbey

We also had the honor of sharing the exhibition’s vernissage on May 7, 2026, with Jacques Rougerie, architect, member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and oceanographer. A friend of Anita Conti’s, it was on his Parisian houseboat in January 1986 that she met Laurent Girault-Conti, who had just illustrated the cover of the book Les Enfants du capitaine Nemo by Hugo Verlomme and Jacques Rougerie. It was, in fact, at the book’s launch cocktail party that the “architect of the sea” introduced them, their shared passion for the ocean and the arts bringing them together. Jacques delighted us with his presence, his enthusiasm, and his anecdotes about this pioneer, in whose footsteps he, too, continues to follow in his own way.

Finally, on World Oceans Day and as part of the “Parcours Océan” cultural program, we had the pleasure of welcoming Laurent Girault-Conti aboard our boat, Zéro de Conduite, for a public reading. During a cruise through the center of Paris, a dozen participants had the opportunity to further explore the poetry of Anita Conti, recited by the man who shared the last twelve years of her life with her.