Seeing the scene through the eyes of the photographer, each frame of a contact sheet provides an insight into how their mind works when capturing a shot. Then, the edit marks come in, layered and superimposed, showing how the image choices were honed and refined with returns to the sheet.

Contact sheets were an incredibly important tool and an inevitable part of the photographic process until digital photography rendered them obsolete.

The full sequence of history unfolds through the chronology of the contact sheet: Eve Arnold capturing an epoch-defining portrait of Malcolm X, Robert Capa documenting the pivotal D-Day landings.

Explore the relationship between single images and contact sheets in this new exhibition now on view at our Paris gallery.