Musée de l’Elysée

http://www.elysee.ch/en/the-museum/

The Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, is entirely devoted to photography. The Institution is affiliated to the Service des affaires culturelles of the State of Vaud. It has eight distinct exhibition spaces on four floors, a Gallery bookshop, a reading room and an outstanding permanent collection.

There are more than 100,000 original prints from the 19th and 20th centuries in the archives, including a unique collection of Gabriel Lippmann’s revolutionary early colour photographs and a representative selection of work by artists such as Francis Frith, Robert Cappa, John Phillips and Marco Giacomelli. The museum has made extensive acquisitions of contemporary photography, frequently linking its purchasing policy to the exhibitions it hosts. Through its ambitious research program and its collaboration with universities and other institutions, the museum has received widespread recognition, particularly in the area of the representation of the human body. The museum hosts exhibitions of international standing presenting the diversity of photographic practice. It organizes theme-based exhibitions and historical retrospectives, showing the work of well-known photographers and of talented young artists. The museum also organizes exhibitions elsewhere in Switzerland and abroad.