The photographic exhibition "The Azores – A Garden over the Atlantic," by the French photojournalist Micheline Pelletier, opens on 11 June at 6:00 p.m. at the Sacred Art Centre of the Carlos Machado Museum, in Ponta Delgada.

The exhibition brings together a body of photographs taken during the author's successive stays in the archipelago, beginning in 2020, a period in which she travelled across the nine islands in different seasons of the year. The result is a view of the Azorean landscape in which light, nature and culture come together in a singular visual narrative.

Internationally renowned, Micheline Pelletier has built a distinguished career in photojournalism, working with some of the world's most prestigious agencies and publications, such as Gamma, Corbis-Sygma, Paris Match, Time and Newsweek, and is currently represented by Getty Images. Over the decades, she has documented social, political and cultural realities in a wide range of global contexts — from portraits of Nobel Peace Prize laureates to the women scientists photographed for the L'Oréal-UNESCO award — always with a deep commitment to the great human and environmental causes.

The exhibition, inspired by the book of the same name published in 2023 and since translated into Portuguese and English, offers a reflection on the Azores as a singular territory, marked by the richness of its biodiversity and by contemporary ecological challenges. For the photographer, the archipelago emerges as a true "garden over the Atlantic," but also as a space of fragile balance between nature and development, mirroring urgent global issues.

The exhibition is supported by the Government of the Azores, Ponta Delgada – Portuguese Capital of Culture 2026, Métropole Toulon Provence Méditerranée, Villa Tamaris – Centre d'Art, L'Œil en Syne and Letras Lavadas.

Admission is free.

Biographical note

Micheline Pelletier was born in Paris in 1953. A photojournalist with an international career, she has worked for the Gamma and Corbis-Sygma agencies and is currently represented by Getty Images.

Over the decades, she has documented social, political and cultural realities across the five continents, with reportage spanning contexts as diverse as Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, Iran at the dawn of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, Walesa's Poland and humanitarian crises in Africa. Her series of portraits of Nobel Peace Prize laureates has been published in more than twenty-seven countries and exhibited in some of the most prestigious venues in Europe and the United States.

Her work regularly features in the pages of leading publications such as Paris Match, Figaro Magazine, Time, Newsweek and Stern. Since 2001, she has been the official photographer of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science award, a project that took her across the five continents over eleven years. Her commitment to environmental causes has also been reflected in her collaboration with organisations such as WWF and Wildtouch.

She is the author of several works, including An Agenda for Peace and Easter Island: Terra Incognita. In 2023 she published The Azores – A Garden over the Atlantic (Éditions Le Cherche-Midi), translated into Portuguese and English by Letras Lavadas. She was artistic director of Villa Tamaris – Centre d'Art (2004–2015) and has been artistic director of the Raymond Devos Museum since 2016.

Micheline Pelletier is a Commander of Arts and Letters (Commandeur des Arts et Lettres) and a Knight of the Legion of Honour (Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur).