Featured Artist: Caroline Lamarche. The Photographic Archives of the Maison de la Métallurgie et de l’Industrie in Liège, the Photographic Archives of the Museum of Photography in Charleroi, and the Photographic Archives of the Museum of Walloon Life.

The exhibition “Le corps à l’ouvrage” uses photography and writing to explore the representation of the body from the Industrial Revolution to the present day, drawing in particular on the photographic archives of the Maison de la Métallurgie in Liège, the Musée de la Vie wallonne, and the Musée de la photographie in Charleroi, as well as the writings of author Caroline Lamarche.

In the nineteenth century, Belgium was one of the world’s leading industrial economies. Photography, a brand-new technique for reproducing reality, allowed corporate executives to assert their power by commissioning photo essays of their facilities—and of their workers. Behind the lens, their faces and bodies were captured and glorified by the artist. Photographed in groups, in front of gigantic machines, staged with their tools, the men, women, and children depicted neither decide on the resulting image nor own it. Like their labor, it belongs to the company that employs them. Rarely named, they form a mass shown without being individualized. When they appear at school, in front of their workers’ housing, or at the retirement home, it is still to highlight their employer’s paternalistic generosity. A true resource, like coal, oil, minerals, and today rare earth elements, this collection serves as a reminder that our society relies on the strength of men, women, children… and, finally, animals, who have worn their bodies down in the industrial machine. Interwoven with the images, Caroline Lamarche’s brief texts—precise, documentary in nature, and sensitive—restore to the bodies captured by the lens their presence, their dignity, and their memory. They lend texture and depth to the lives of those whose images were stolen.

Dates: November 6, 2026 – December 31, 2026

Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 10am–6pm; Saturday, 10am–6:30pm

Address: Place Xavier Neujean 4000 Liège 27/A

Opening night: November 6, 2026, 6:30pm talk with Caroline Lamarche

Website: oyou.be

Additional information: With the support of the Ministry of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, the Province of Liège, and the municipalities of Clavier, Marchin and Modave