Exposition "LALA photographie sa ville" - Jardin Villemin

Following a notable exhibition on the railings of the Hôtel de Ville during the summer of 2025, the work of Nicole LALA is taking up residence in the 10th arrondissement, on the railings of the Jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini. A photojournalist from 1960 onwards for the magazine Regards, then a set photographer and discreet witness to the margins and the intimate, she left behind upon her death in 2015 a collection of nearly 20,000 snapshots. Her daughter, Delphine Bonnet, has turned this into a work of memory and transmission now revealed to the general public.

Remaining in the shadows throughout her life, Nicole LALA was nevertheless a major photographer of everyday life, the sensitive, and the invisible.

Following an initial open-air exhibition on the railings of the Hôtel de Ville during the summer of 2025, it is now the turn of the Jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini to host this tribute, revealing the scale of a discreet yet powerful body of work, nourished by working-class reports, set photography, urban scenes, and intimate moments.

Entitled simply LALA photographie sa ville, this retrospective brings together black-and-white photographs taken in the capital between the late 1950s and the early 1980s, revealing an intimate, sometimes fleeting, always vibrant Paris.

In 1960, commissioned by the magazine Regards around the same time as Willy Ronis, Nicole LALA became one of only two female photojournalists to cover current affairs for this monthly publication.

Armed with her Rolleiflex and her Exakta Varex, she bore visual witness to the agricultural and working-class world, and observed, between assignments, the Paris of her daily life through her lenses.

Later, engaged on film shoots, she made it her business to freeze the gestures and expressions of the stars of her day.

This selection is drawn from an impressive collection of around 20,000 black-and-white photographs, accompanied by negatives in pristine condition, which the artist herself developed and printed.

Throughout her life, LALA also photographed those close to her, most notably her daughter.

Thanks to the work of memory and transmission carried out by the latter, Delphine Bonnet, now the exhibition's curator, this visual treasure is finally coming to light: when Nicole LALA passed away in 2015, thousands of negatives and prints were still sleeping, never before shown, at the bottom of the drawers in her bedroom.

This exhibition can be discovered with free admission, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, on the railings of the Jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini (Quai de Valmy side).