our history

Created at the dawn of the new millenium, the subject of the first Nicéphore + festival  was the perception of reality and our relationship with images, given how much they had changed since the birth of photography some 160 years earlier, and to open the debate on  these developments, driven by the emergence of new technologies that tend to influence the ways and also the capacities we have to perceive them.
Thus in the autumn of 2000, the Nicéphore + international photographic festival of Clermont-Ferrand was held for the first time.  An ambitious event for the newly created association behind it, whose deliberate goal was to provide the opportunity to discover major exhibitions and meet renowned photographers within the region, developing multiple aspects of a pre-defined theme that would evolve with each edition of the festival.

This resulted in Clermont-Ferrand hosting some of the leading names from all fields of all photography: traditional, resolutely contemporary, plastic arts, social or journalism...