The Collection

Adolphe Braun is known as a photographer who worked at the court of Napoleon III and as an entrepreneur and founder of Ad. Braun & Cie (1876-1968). He excelled in the field of still life photographs and landscapes of Germany, Switzerland and France. His work on the Alps is among the most important in the history of photography. His documentary photographs about the opening of the Gothard railway are a good example. 160 original prints representing several genres by Braun are present in the collection of the Musée de l'Elysée.

French photographer, he began training in 1964 as a fashion photographer before joining the Gamma agency in 1967. He undertook photographic assignments in Israel, Vietnam, Biafra, Northern Ireland, Czechoslovakia and Sahel and he also covered the events in Paris in May 1968. He died at the age of 30 in Cambodia.

144 prints were donated by the Gilles Caron Foundation in October 2010 and are housed in the collection of the Musée de l’Elysée. 

Constant Delessert was one of the first photographers practising in Lausanne along with Friedrich von Martens and two members of his in-laws, Benjamin and Edouard Delessert, the latter being the author of the famous album ‘Six weeks on the island of Sardinia’ (1854) which the Musée de l'Elysée has in its collection. All these figures were members of the French Photographic Society. Constant Delessert is also known as a daguerreotypist.

Trained as a painter, Geraldo de Barros discovered, through photography, abstraction of which he became one of the main exponents in Brazil. He then redirected his career to painting and design. Holder of a scholarship, he spent two years in France, after which he became one of the leaders of the Art concret international movement.

195 of his prints are housed in the collection of the Musée de l'Elysée.

Book Geraldo de Barros - Fotoformas-Sobras | IDpure éditions - Musée de l'Elysée

English photographer Francis Frith, became known through his photographs of landscapes and travel photographs. After visiting Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, Frith went to Switzerland in 1865, where he took numerous picturesque views aimed at tourists. He created his own publishing company and marketed products as diverse as stereoscopic and photogravure images.

Hundreds of his valuable original prints are part of the collection of the Musée de l'Elysée.

Mario Giacomelli is recognized as one of the most important Italian photographers. He proved to be very creative in all areas: portraits of peasants of the Abruzzo, rural landscapes, still lives and documentary photographs in hospices. He reproduced the landscapes of the 1980s, giving them a new dimension with aerial photography, creating one of the most original series in the history of this photographic genre.

The Musée de l’Elysée owns an exceptional portfolio of 174 of his original prints.

Hungarian-born American photographer Robert Capa - whose real name was Endre Ernő Friedmann - is perhaps one of the most famous of all war photographers. He covered the major contemporary conflicts: the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the First Indochina War. He was also a founder of the Magnum photographic agency in 1947 with Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour. He died at the age of 41 in Vietnam while covering the First Indochina War.

The Musée de l'Elysée has in its collection 144 modern prints of this great photojournalist.  

Author of documentary films as well as photographic reports, Raymond Depardon occupies a special place in the history of documentary photography. Through a highly original approach, he developed a body of work that closely combines text and image. He was both co-founder of the Gamma agency - with Gilles Caron - and a member of the Magnum agency.

The Musée de l'Elysée has 75 of his original prints in its collection.

John Phillips, American photographer, best known for the photographic report he made of the last days of Saint-Exupéry in 1944 at the Alghero Air Base in Sardinia, which were published in several languages. This great reporter and war correspondent for Life magazine is also the author of unique images on the Anschluss, the rebellion led by Tito, the liberation of the concentration camps and the creation of Israel seen from the Arab point of view. Few world events escaped this photographer's lens.

1,434 original prints enrich the collection of the Musée de l'Elysée. 

John Phillips, Mythologies | Video

Gabriel Lippmann, a French physicist, conducted research in optical light radiation. This research led to the invention of a process which in some respects is similar to holography: interference photochromes, also known as Lippmann plates. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1908 for inventing this colour process.

The 133 landscapes, portraits and still lives owned by the museum constitute a unique series of colour photographs made by Lippmann himself. 

Christine Spengler, French photographer, showed her talents as a reporter in a profession where women were few and far between. Her images of the Iranian revolution and the bombing of Phnom Penh by U.S. aircraft are among the most remarkable testimonies to the contemporary events covered by many photographers. Keen on witnessing what she saw as ‘just causes’, Christine Spengler has spent twenty-five years photographing a world torn apart by conflict.The Musée de l'Elysée owns 90 of her original photographs.

Lucia Moholy, Czech photographer, opened a portrait studio in Weimar in 1923, where her husband, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy taught at the Bauhaus. During this period she made portraits of Gropius, Kandinsky, other representatives of the Avant-garde and colleagues of her husband at the famous art school. Her photographs of architecture and decorative arts reflect modernist aesthetics in their heyday.

203 of her photographs were donated to the Musée de l'Elysée. 

Sebastião Salgado, an economist by training, became a photographer by vocation. The interest of his work is notably due to his aesthetic approach of photojournalism. His photographs, of a very classical nature, celebrate the working life of peasants and workers, with a perspective of social transformation.

166 original prints are part of the collection of the Musée de l'Elysée.