Jean-Claude Lemagny

[5] Highlighting contemporary photography and with a regular publication of catalogues he presented solo exhibitions of photographers including Édouard Boubat (1973), Gilles Caron (1978),[6] Garry Winogrand (1980), Christian Milovanoff (1980), Rogi André (1981), François Le Diascorn (1982), Arnaud Claass (1982), Tom Drahos (1984), Charles Harbutt (1989), Bruce Gilden (1989), Louis Faurer (1990).

Lemagny also mounted exhibitions from the library's collection on a monthly basis so that it reflected the contemporary evolution of the medium.

In total Lemagny presented more than two hundred exhibitions at the National Library[7] and others in sites in Paris and around the world; Eloge de l'Ombre ('in Praise of the Shadow') for example, was presented to the public in 2000–2001 at the Kawasaki Municipal Museum and the Yamaguchi regional Fine Art Museum in Japan.

[2][8] In 1981, he contributed to the creation of the journal Les Cahiers de la photographie, in which a number of his essays appeared.

In 1989, Lemagny wrote: "In photography, as in all art, what is of fundamental importance is not finding an idea but exploring matter manifest in forms.

"[11] L'ombre et le temps published in 1992 sets out Lemagny's propositions about photography, to which the book's other contributors respond.

[A] radiant technical success resulting from a society which began to make everything permutable and exchangeable, does photography remain, paradoxically, a last small room where art could survive?”The presentation provoked strong reactions.

[13] Lemagny supported Lucien Clergue in organising in 1970 the first Rencontre Internationale d'Arles, an international photography festival, to which he was sometimes invited to give an official presentation, though he usually attended in a personal capacity.