Left in the shadows throughout her life, Nicole LALA was nonetheless a major photographer of the everyday, the sensitive, and the invisible. After a first outdoor exhibition on the railings of the Hôtel de Ville during the summer of 2025, it is now the Jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini that hosts this tribute in turn, revealing the scope of a discreet yet powerful body of work, nourished by workers' reportage, set images, urban scenes and intimate moments.
Titled simply 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, invited by the magazine Regards at the same time as Willy Ronis, Nicole LALA became one of the only two women photojournalists-reporters to cover current events for this monthly. Armed with her Rolleiflex and her Exacta Varex, she bore witness through images to the agricultural and working-class world, and between assignments observed the Paris of her daily life through her lenses. Then, engaged on film shoots, she set about capturing the gestures and expressions of the stars of her time.
This selection is drawn from an impressive collection of about 20,000 black-and-white photographs, along with 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, today the exhibition's curator, this visual treasure is finally coming to light: when Nicole LALA died in 2015, thousands of negatives and prints still lay dormant, never shown, at the bottom of drawers in her bedroom.
This exhibition is free to visit, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day, on the railings of the Jardin Villemin-Mahsa Jîna Amini (quai de Valmy side).