A Transatlantic Dialogue in Images: The En Route Exhibition Opens in Marseille
Presented by Villa Albertine and La Friche la Belle de mai, in partnership with the High Museum of Art Atlanta, curated by Maria L. Kelly, the exhibition runs from March 14 to May 3, 2026.
The exhibition marks the achievement of the City/Cité Atlanta x Marseille platform launched in 2022, putting in dialogue two major southern cities shaped by layered histories, migration, and strong cultural identities.
Four artists, who completed residencies abroad, present new works developed through immersion and exchange. Marseille-based photographers Yohanne Lamoulère and Geoffroy Mathieu traveled to Atlanta, a major center for African American culture and a fast-growing metropolis. On the other hand, Atlanta-based artists Nydia Blas and Joshua Dudley Greer spent time in Marseille, an open port on the Mediterranean Sea with a cultural melting pot yet also marked by geographical and social divisions. Through photography, each artist navigated unfamiliar terrains, using the medium as a tool for meetings, observations, and reflections.
In Atlanta, Yohanne Lamoulère immersed herself in high school marching bands, producing portraits and dynamic scenes that capture discipline, pride, and collective energy. Geoffroy Mathieu explored the sprawling, car-oriented city on foot, documenting improvised pedestrian routes and the individuals who move through terrains not designed for walking.
In Marseille, Nydia Blas collaborated with teenagers working at La Friche la Belle de Mai, creating intimate, co-authored portraits that reflect the city’s multicultural identity. Dudley Greer focused on Marseille’s varied neighborhoods and rocky landscapes, tracing subtle intersections of past, present, and future across its 111 districts.
Together, the four perspectives reveal unexpected resonances between Atlanta and Marseille while emphasizing their distinct geographies and histories.
The residencies and exhibition could not have happened without the generous support and dedication of Villa Albertine, Friche la Belle de Mai, and the High Museum of Art. The exhibition is supported by Etant donnés, a program of Albertine Foundation and Villa Albertine.
About the Artists
Maria L. Kelly
Maria L. Kelly is the Assistant Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art. Maria was the curatorial assistant in the High’s photography department from 2011 to 2016 and returned to the museum in 2019. During her time at the High, Maria has helped organize more than twenty-five photography installations. Her exhibitions at the High include Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing (2025), Tyler Mitchell: Idyllic Space (2024), Underexposed: Women Photographers from the Collection (2021), What Is Near: Reflections on Home (2016), Helen Levitt: In the Street (2015), and Leonard Freed: Black in White America (2014). She was the venue curator for Deana Lawson (2022), co-organized by the ICA Boston and MoMA PS1, and André Kertész: Postcards from Paris (2022), organized by the Art Institute of Chicago.
Yohanne Lamoulère
Yohanne Lamoulère, a photographer based in Marseille, France, graduated from the École nationale supérieure de photographie in Arles in 2004. Her preferred themes are urban peripheries and insularity in its multifaceted forms. She published Faux Bourgs (Le Bec en l’air) in 2018, a compilation of her series on Marseille. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions: MUCEM (Marseille), Portrait(s) festival (Vichy), Fondation Schneider (Wattwiller), ImageSingulières festival (Sète), Clervaux-Cité de l’image (Luxembourg), and is included in public and private collections (CNAP, BnF, Neuflize-OBC). A member of the collectives Tendance Floue and Zirlib, she released her first film, L’œil Noir, in 2025.
Nydia Blas
Nydia Blas is a visual artist who grew up in Ithaca, New York, and resides in Atlanta, Georgia. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She has completed artist residencies at Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and The Center for Photography at Woodstock.
Her work has been commissioned by The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. Blas uses photography, collage, video, and books to explore themes of sexuality, intimacy, and her lived experience as a girl, woman, and mother. Blas is widely recognized for The Girls Who Spun Gold, a collection of images that resulted from a Girl Empowerment Group she founded after observing a lack of space and community for teen girls of African descent in Ithaca, N.Y. Her first major monograph Love You Came from Greatness (2025), is an exploration of one Ithaca-based Black family and its community across many generations. The book is also a formally rigorous examination of the taxonomy and syntax of family portraiture.
Geoffroy Mathieu
Geoffroy Mathieu’s photography explores how environmental and political issues are made tangible in the landscapes. Through travel and immersion based projects, he documents shifting territories, in-between spaces, and objects and actions that reveal resistances in the way in which places are used. His photography series are all pursued as poetic investigations, combining rigorous documentary research with a poetic approach to build situated narratives. He collaborates with associations, collectives, and researchers to circulate his images beyond the art world, support causes, and contribute to public debate on ecological care.
A graduate of the French Higher School of Photography (ENSP) in Arles, he lives and works in Marseille. He presents his works as publications (Actes Sud, Poursuite, Filigranes, Zoème, Wildproject, Building Books), solo or collective exhibitions, and, more recently, walked performances. He participated in the fourth edition of Regards du Grand Paris (2021), received the “Radioscopie of France” Major Photojournalism Commission (2022), and co-published Anti-installation with Jordi Ballesta (Building Books, 2023), supported by the French Center for Visual Arts (CNAP) publishing grant.
Joshua Dudley Greer
Joshua Dudley Greer (b. 1980, Hazleton, PA) is a photographer based in Atlanta, GA, where he teaches at Georgia State University. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The California Sunday Magazine, The Atlantic, PDN, Le Monde, The Georgia Review, GUP Magazine, and Oxford American. He has received grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Aaron Siskind Foundation. He has published two monographs to date – Somewhere Along the Line (Kehrer Verlag, 2019) and The Makeshift City (GOST, 2024). His work is included in the permanent collections of the Harvard Art Museums, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the New York Public Library, the Do Good Fund, and the High Museum of Art.