85 chats by Ylla (La Guilde du livre, Lausanne, 1952)
Running September 19 through February 1, 2026 L is for Look will focus on children's photobooks from their rise in the 1930s to the present day at the Photo Elysée in Lausanne.
Most of the books on display come from the Photo Elysée library, one of the largest collections of photography books in Europe with more than 30,000 titles.
In their early days in the 1930s, the main purpose of children's photobooks was to enrich the vocabulary and knowledge of young children, essentially works for child development. Their graphic and material design featuring spiral binding, interactive features, and fold-out pages became a key component and encouraged a participatory approach to learning.
After the war there was a new movement in the form of photography aimed at helping to nurture children’s view of the world and teaching them about difference. The photobook became a learning tool that explored lifestyles, origins, and disabilities, while encouraging children to discover and express their own emotions.
Tana Hoban and Edith Baer's The Wonder of Hands (Éditions Parents Magazine, New York, 1970)
From the 1950s onwards, under the influence of cinema, television, and live performance, children's photobooks began to expand into the realm of fiction. Thanks to image sequencing, they became a narrative medium in their own right. At the same time, photography gained artistic recognition as artists began to take stories and reinterpret them visually. Today, technological advances and digital tools have fostered the rise of mixed media, a practice now common in children's illustration, which combines drawing and photography.
Following its presentation at Photo Elysée, L is for Look will embark on a European tour to the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles, the Photographers' Gallery in London, the Centre National de l'Audiovisuel (CNA) in Luxembourg, and Foto Arsenal in Vienna before concluding in 2028 at the Institut pour la Photographie in Lille. A book edited by Anne Lacoste and Rose Durr is being published by Spector Books (Leipzig) to accompany the exhibition.
