The originality of "Patrick Demarchelier: A Passionate Journey" (until Jan. 4) is that the museum has used its long, light-filled galleries to insert the photographer's black-and-white fashion visions, personality portraits and contemporary travel images among its existing displays. That creates intriguing juxtapositions, like a black-and-white angular modernity set against the pastel, decorative prettiness of rococo objects; or a pastoral painting by Gustave Courbet of a herd of munching cattle beside an arresting image of couture with cows - a photograph of models in hyper-sophisticated high fashion in the gardens of Versailles that appeared in French Vogue in 2007.

"All the Vogues are different," says Demarchelier, who also explained why he continues to shoot everything in black and white, saying: "I like the mystery. A nude in color looks cheap and vulgar. In black and white, there is a veil."

One thing unites all the work, whether it is the iconic images bathed in natural light from the museum's main-floor courtyard or filling a basement room with themed photographs. The key is spontaneity. A lithe nude body, sensual but never sexy, stretches with Olympian energy. A movie star is caught in that moment that the photographer cherishes, "when we have been together for a while" and the camera is forgotten.

Demarchelier was born in Paris but spent his childhood in Normandy. ("That's why I like cows," he says.) His first camera was a Kodak, a present from his father for his 17th birthday, and from that moment until he left France for New York in 1975, equipped with camera but not one word of English, his lens was his fortune. After more than a decade working for Harper's Bazaar through the 1990s, he ultimately joined Condé Nast, home of all the Vogues, where he is the key photographer today.

The first image from a man who has incarnated the essence of Parisian elegance in a hat of full-blown roses was snapped in New Guinea - indigenous people working a rope bridge within a jungle of greenery. Through the black-and-white image you can imagine the depth of color and observe the glistening of skin, just as you can with a 1991 photograph of Naomi Campbell as an African icon in French Vogue.