It was a bit of a crazy bet. At just 17 years old, Ruth Orkin embarked on a journey that would mark the start of an exceptional career in photography. Leaving Los Angeles by bicycle to reach New York for the 1939 World's Fair was only the beginning of a transcontinental adventure that would shape his life. Armed with her camera, the young woman travels across the United States, capturing fascinating images from each stage of her journey. For four months strewn with discoveries, the apprentice adventurer takes nearly 350 striking photographs, depicting bustling cities, immortalizing herself in ingenious self-portraits, and imagining new artistic compositions, where her bicycle becomes the central frame of the plot. From Chicago to Philadelphia, from Washington to Boston, each stop is transformed into images
captivating, worthy of a Hollywood production. This exhibition, the first in France dedicated to her, finally reveals the talent of an unrecognized visionary figure, an avant-garde photographer who pushed the limits of photographic art, to keep only the optimism of a new modernity, reminding us if necessary, that talent and determination have no gender, and that artistic expression is infinite.