Past and Present Visions of Notre Dame
After a fire devastated Notre-Dame in 2019, only three photographers were chosen to document its reconstruction. Among them was Tomas van Houtryve, a 2024-2025 Fellow of the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Over four years, van Houtryve captured the cathedral’s revival using a range of techniques—from the historic collodion process to drone photography—highlighting the moment’s historical depth and significance. In this episode, he reflects on how the present and the past intersected throughout the project, his collaborations with fellow photographers and craftspeople, and the journey that led to 36 Views of Notre-Dame, a book and an exhibition now on view at Galerie Miranda in Paris through December 23, 2024.
Atelier is produced by the Columbia Global Paris Center, a Columbia University initiative housed at Reid Hall.
Tomas van Houtryve is a photographer who uses a wide range of contemporary and early techniques, continually questioning and reinventing his approach to image-making. He spent a year documenting the efforts to save Notre-Dame from ruin after the devastating fire of 2019. A selection of his honors include the ICP Infinity Award, the Bayeux Prize for War Correspondents, the CatchLight Global Fellowship, a National Geographic Explorer’s Grant and the Roger Pic Award. He published Lines and Lineage in 2019. Represented by the Baudoin Lebon gallery in Paris, he is a member of VII Photo Agency since 2010. At the Institute, van Houtryve will be working on “Terrifying Sublime: Synthetic Alpine Landscapes,” employing photography and video to explore the reversal of our power relationship with nature since the notion of the sublime became a prominent concept in art and philosophy.
