The exhibition, co-curated by Sam Stourdzé, Chedid and Parr, was first presented at the Église des Frères-Prêcheurs in Arles under the auspices of the Rencontres d'Arles photography summer festival, and the installation at Cité de la Musique in Paris retains the church’s immersive ambience by designing a space of dark surfaces and low illumination where the only brightly lit objects are the pictures.

Functioning as a mini-retrospective with more than 500 photographs, Parr’s work is grouped in nine thematic chapters featuring themes such as animals (real and imaginary), headdresses and congregations, each paired with a unique soundtrack, specially composed by Chedid, which is arranged around one music instrument (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, celesta etc). Although the matching of the pictorial theme and the specific instrument may seem somehow arbitrary, the result is a tour de force of creative collaboration that captivates visitors from the moment they walk in.

The images are presented in different formats, from black and white framed prints to floor-to-ceiling posters but what immediately catches the visitor’s attention are the multiple wall projections of large-scale colour images, in front of which deck chairs have been set up for visitors to relax in and enjoy the musical-pictorial spectacle. The deck chairs, specially made for the show featuring Parr’s photos, perfectly complement the nostalgia that underpins Parr’s work but also allude to his life-long fascination with the seaside —his 1986 book “The Last Resort” about the seaside resort of New Brighton is said to have launched his international career.

As visitors walk around the exhibition, pulled in and out of each audiovisual installation, each music composition swells and fades but is never fully silenced. It’s as if an orchestra has been “deconstructed” giving visitors the task of mentally reconstructing the distinct sounds into a virtual concerto, a poetic process that mirrors Parr’s photographs which challenge viewers to see the bigger picture out of the fragments they depict.

Rounding up this truly multi-sensory exhibition is an installation that also includes the sense of touch. Here, visitors are invited to sit down on a specially designed deck where Chedid’s bass arrangement can also be experienced through vibrations. Towering across the deck is a floor-to-ceiling print of Parr’s photo “Clare College May Ball, Cambridge, England”, which fittingly captures the moment, late at a fancy cocktail party in an upper class home, when the guests have shed their inhibitions, taken off their shoes and sat on the floor, an experience not so different to the one this exhibition invites visitors to partake in.