Exposition "LALA photographie sa ville" - Jardin Villemin - Mahsa Jîna Amini

Jardin Villemin - Mahsa Jîna Amini

After a widely noticed exhibition on the railings of the Hôtel de Ville during the summer of 2025, the work of Nicole LALA is now being installed in the 10th arrondissement, on the railings of the jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini. A photojournalist from 1960 for the magazine Regards, then a set photographer and discreet witness of the margins and the intimate, she left behind at her passing in 2015 an archive of nearly 20,000 photographs. Her daughter, Delphine Bonnet, has turned this into a work of memory and transmission, now revealed to the general public. Having remained in the shadows all her life, Nicole LALA was nevertheless 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 the summer of 2025, it is now the jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini that in turn hosts this tribute, revealing the scope of a discreet yet powerful body of work, nourished by working-class reportages, set photographs, 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 the early 1980s, revealing an intimate Paris, sometimes fleeting, always vibrant. In 1960, approached by the magazine Regards at the same time as Willy Ronis, Nicole LALA became one of only two women photojournalists covering current events for this monthly. Armed with her Rolleiflex and her Exacta Varex, she bore visual witness to the world of farmers and workers, and observed, between assignments, the Paris of her everyday life through her lenses. Then, hired on film sets, she devoted herself to capturing the gestures and expressions of the stars of her time. This selection comes from an impressive archive of about 20,000 black-and-white photographs, accompanied by negatives in perfect condition, which the artist herself developed and printed. During her lifetime, LALA also photographed those close to her, and especially her daughter. Thanks to the work of memory and transmission carried out by the latter, Delphine Bonnet, now curator of the exhibition, this visual treasure finally comes to light: upon Nicole LALA's passing in 2015, thousands of negatives and prints still lay dormant, never shown, at the back of the drawers in her bedroom. This exhibition can be freely viewed, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day, on the railings of the jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini (on the quai de Valmy side).

Source: Paris Open Data ↗