On 15 September, Chancellor of Justice Ülle Madise, Ambassador of the French Republic to Estonia Alexandre Escorcia, photographer Jean-Louis Courtinat, and curators Kristel Aimee Laur and Toomas Järvet opened the exhibition “This Concerns Us All” by acclaimed French photographer Jean-Louis Courtinat at the Juhan Kuus Documentary Photo Centre. The exhibition, bringing together around 80 photographs, explores vulnerability, care and human connection, spanning from the author’s social documentary work of the 1980s to the present day.
Jean-Louis Courtinat engages deeply with issues of human dignity. For more than forty years, Courtinat has photographed people who often remain outside society’s attention or from whom we tend to avert our gaze: children undergoing cancer treatment, people nearing the end of life, carers and medical workers, people living in homelessness and poverty, abandoned children, prisoners and refugees. “They are you and you are them,” Courtinat has said. This idea sums up both his creative method and the central message of the exhibition: vulnerability is not an exceptional condition that belongs to someone else, but part of being human.
In her opening speech, Chancellor of Justice Ülle Madise emphasised that despite the difficult situations depicted in the artist’s photographs, there is light in them — something always worth seeking in life.
The exhibition is open at the Juhan Kuus Documentary Photo Centre until 3 January 2027.
Photo: Peeter Langovits