Pierre et Gilles have made portraits the same way for half a century: a staged photograph, then paint applied by hand to the same surface. To mark fifty years of working together, Galerie Templon Beaubourg in Paris presents “Rose pour toi, rose pour moi” (“Rose for you, rose for me”), a free exhibition opening on 7 November.

The show gathers around twenty portraits made over the past two years, continuing the duo’s habit of turning their sitters into characters. Sacred figures, pop culture and fictional worlds supply the raw material, while colour, props and settings give each portrait its own narrative frame. Nothing in the image is left to chance: every backdrop, costume and gesture is staged before the camera, and the painting that follows is what turns a photograph into a one-off object.

Among the works on view, actor Camille Cottin appears as Lady Macbeth, Lolly Wish portrays Mary Magdalene, and Ebony Osaz becomes “The Black Star”. A tribute to the singer Renaud, titled “Long Live Me”, is also part of the selection, showing how the duo’s cast moves freely between the stage, the screen, music and myth.

Photographer Pierre Commoy and painter Gilles Blanchard met in 1976, and their collaboration has since become one of the most recognisable signatures in contemporary portraiture — a visual language for turning public figures into icons. The new exhibition follows “Nuit électrique”, devoted to nocturnal figures, and revisits the pair’s long-running project of icon-making. Fifty years on, the method has not changed, but the icons are drawn from the present day, and the anniversary is the occasion for a stock-taking rather than the subject itself.