ROUBAIX PHOTO
MORE THAN A CENTURY OF IMAGES, USES AND PERSPECTIVES IN LA PISCINE’S COLLECTIONS
Exhibition from 6 June to 6 September 2026
For the past 30 years, photography has enjoyed growing institutional recognition, which has made it an art form in its own right. Once considered a secondary medium associated with reporting, documentation or amateur photography, it has gradually found its place in public collections, exhibition programmes and the market for contemporary art. The exhibition aims to retrace the history of photography in Roubaix through the collections of La Piscine museum, focusing as much on its social uses as its artistic forms. From developing film to digital experimentation, from humanist photography to conceptual staging, from amateur snapshots to visual creations, it covers a multi-faceted and sensitive panorama of the medium. Through historical and contemporary works, documentary collections and various series by artists, this exhibition reveals the riches of the Roubaix-based collection and the diversity of the photographic perspectives it curates – portraits of artists, scenes of working life, textile heritage. In a cross-sector approach that is faithful to the spirit of the museum, where various disciplines come together and respond to each other, the exhibition enables dialogue between photography and other forms of expression (painting, sculpture, graphic arts, ceramics, haute couture) and examines the cultural, social and aesthetic issues of our relationship with reality and the collective memory.
This exhibition prefigures the celebrations of the bicentenary of photography to be held from September 2026 to September 2027 by the Ministry of Culture.
Curator: Amandine Delcourt, head of documentation, La Piscine – André Diligent Museum of Art and Industry
The scenography was completed thanks to the generous support of Tollens paint.
Caption: Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (1921 – 2004), The Girl with the Cat, Roubaix 1958-1959. Roubaix, La Piscine – André Diligent museum of art and industry. Donated by the Society of Friends of the Museum in 2024. © ADAGP, Paris, 2025
