Photography, a French passion

From Niépce's camera obscura to Doisneau's pavements, how a country fell in love with the image, and why it never got over it.

Two centuries ago, in a village in Burgundy, a man watched the world slowly imprint itself on a plate. What Nicéphore Niépce didn't yet know was that he had just opened the door to an adventure that would become, in France more than anywhere else, a true love story.

An invention that became a national affair

It all starts here: Niépce in Burgundy, then Daguerre in Paris, and the day the French state chose to give the invention « to the whole world ». We won't tell the story of that birth in detail here, it has its own pages: what exactly we are celebrating with the bicentenary of photography in 2027, and the story of 19 August, World Photography Day.

What interests us here is what came next. The enthusiasm was immediate and almost feverish: studios opening on the boulevards, portraits snapped up by the bourgeoisie, photographers travelling as far as Egypt to bring back views of temples. In 1854 the Société française de photographie was founded, one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the world: the country very quickly took its new art seriously.

^{Maxime Du Camp, colossus of the great temple of Abu Simbel, 1850. Public domain (Metropolitan Museum of Art).}

A way of seeing that set the standard

In the 20th century, French photography perhaps found its most distinctive voice. A generation of photographers took to the streets to capture ordinary people's lives, with no apparent staging: a stolen kiss, a child at play, a bistro coming to life early in the morning. Doisneau, Ronis, Boubat, Izis, Sabine Weiss... and, towering above this family, the tall figure of Henri Cartier-Bresson and his « decisive moment ». A movement that art history would name after the fact, and which we tell separately: What is humanist photography?

What remains is a way of seeing: in France, photography is seen less as a technical feat than as an art of looking and of encounter.

^{Willy Ronis, Montmartre, 1960. © Donation Willy Ronis, Ministère de la Culture (France), Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie, distributed by GrandPalaisRmn Photo}

A passion lived on the ground

This passion hasn't stayed in the history books. It has its events, its places, its audience.

• Arles, every summer, with the Rencontres de la photographie (founded in 1970), now a global event.
• Perpignan, every late summer, with Visa pour l'image, the photojournalism festival, where people come to see what is hardest and truest in the world. (To understand the profession: What is photojournalism?)
• La Gacilly and its photo festival, which offers a photographic walk.
• Chalon-sur-Saône, where the Musée Nicéphore Niépce preserves the memory of the invention, in the very town where it all began.
• Paris and its many galleries, the international fair Paris Photo, the Salon de la Photo, and more.
• Aubrac, Montier-en-Der, Deauville, Cergy, and more.
• And everywhere, galleries, associations, printing workshops and collectives of enthusiasts who keep photography alive every day.

French photography is this too: less a heritage than a shared practice.

^{The Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône.}

And in Hendaye?

This is where Argia comes in. Our photography collective, born in the Basque Country, exhibits, passes on and brings people together: two editions of Crossed Perspectives in 2026, and soon the Three Crowns Festival, whose first edition will take place in Hendaye in the week of 12 April 2027, right in the bicentenary year. One more way to keep this French passion alive, on the border and a little in our own way. Discover the birth of the Three Crowns Festival.

^{Crossed Perspectives, Hendaye, 2026. © Argia Collective}

A passion still very much alive

From the Rencontres d'Arles to the countless amateurs who, smartphone in pocket, unknowingly carry on the gesture Niépce began, the passion is intact. From the first faltering heliographs to digital sensors, photography in France remains what it has always been: a way of loving the world by looking at it.