Paris to Open First Museum Dedicated to Historical Photography

Paris will open its first museum dedicated to historical photography by the end of 2020, filling a gap in the city's rich photographic landscape, which until now focused on modern, contemporary, and photojournalism. The decision followed the Paris Municipal Council's grant on November 15, 2019, to NDLR / Photononstop for the promotion and commercial exploitation of the Roger-Viollet and France-Soir photographic collections. The Roger-Viollet collection comprises nearly six million photographs spanning 1858 to 2008, including archives from the Roger-Viollet agency and older collections from Léopold Mercier and Laurent Ollivier, acquired by Hélène Roger-Viollet and Jean Fischer, who founded the agency in 1938. Bequeathed to the city in 1985, it has been housed at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. The France-Soir collection, from the newspaper founded in 1944, includes about 6.5 million pieces, also held at the Bibliothèque Historique; the newspaper was acquired in 2009 by a Russian oligarch close to Putin. Both collections will be exhibited at the historic Roger-Viollet boutique at 6 Rue de Seine in the 6th arrondissement on the Left Bank. The museum will feature a permanent collection, two thematic exhibitions per year, and sales of vintage photo reproductions. The article also notes other Parisian photography venues: the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, which opened in February 2019, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, founded in 1985.