Exposition "LALA photographie sa ville" - Jardin Villemin

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

Remaining in the shadows her entire life, Nicole LALA was nonetheless a major photographer of the everyday, the sensitive, the invisible.

After a first open-air exhibition on the railings of the Hôtel de Ville during summer 2025, it is now the Jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini that hosts this tribute, revealing the scope of a discreet but powerful body of work, nourished by workers' reports, set images, urban scenes, and intimate moments.

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

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

Armed with her Rolleiflex and Exacta Varex, she documented the agricultural and working-class world through images, and, between assignments, observed her daily Paris through her lenses.

Then, engaged on film sets, she meticulously captured the gestures and expressions of the stars of her time.

This selection comes from an impressive collection of approximately 20,000 black and white photographs, accompanied by negatives in perfect condition, which the artist herself developed and printed.

During her life, LALA also photographed her loved ones, and especially her daughter.

Thanks to the work of memory and transmission carried out by the latter, Delphine Bonnet, now the exhibition curator, this visual treasure finally comes to light: upon Nicole LALA's death in 2015, thousands of negatives and prints still lay, never shown, at the bottom of her bedroom drawers.

This exhibition is freely accessible, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day, on the railings of the Jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini (Quai de Valmy side).