A Century of Children’s Photobooks is Exhibited in Arles

Paul Cottin, a major collector of children’s photobooks, donated part of his collection to Photo Elysée. Several European institutions then joined forces to imagine an exhibition around this corpus, but the project never quite came together. “The project was initiated about ten years ago with several institutions that are now part of the tour, and it ultimately didn’t happen,” says Anne Lacoste, director of the Institut pour la photographie des Hauts-de-France. It would take the Institut picking up the project again two years ago, with a scientific committee bringing together Paul Cottin, Florian Ebner, and PhD researcher Rose Durr, for the exhibition to finally see the light of day. After being shown in Lausanne and then Essen, it arrives in Arles this summer, before travelling on to Lille, Vienna, and Luxembourg.

The exhibition brings together more than 100 albums published in different countries since the 1930s, organized into six sections: pedagogy, education, fiction, animals, photographism, and awakening the gaze. The layout follows no chronological order. “We built it thematically, in a way that seemed to capture the specific traits, the distinctions of the children’s photobook,” the curator explains. An architecture shaped “by the study of the books themselves” and by the history of children’s publishing as a whole.

Reinhard Matz, Frühstück [Breakfast], 1995–2000 © Courtesy of Reinhard Matz.

A century of history, a shift toward the child

In the 1930s, photography established itself in alphabet books and picture books for its ability to replace text. “The image, and photography in particular, can replace text, and the image is much more accessible,” Anne Lacoste explains. A finger points at an object, a child learns to count. Then came the postwar years, and with them a decisive shift in how childhood itself was understood. The exhibition cites the Polish pedagogue Janusz Korczak, who believed a child has the right to have their sadness respected, even over something as small as a lost pebble. For Anne Lacoste, this turn toward empathy reflects “a new approach to education in which the child is considered an individual,” one that takes into account “their emotions and their place as an individual within society.”

Asked to name two or three books that alone shaped the history of the genre, the curator demurs. “I would have to take an example from every section,” she says. But one name comes up unprompted: Tana Hoban, the American photographer who took part in the exhibition “The Family of Man,” and who also worked as a graphic designer and ran workshops for children. She would go on to produce around a hundred books. “Many major names in photography made children’s photobooks now and then, or as part of a series,” notes Anne Lacoste, “but one of the towering figures of the children’s photobook is Tana Hoban.”

Tana Hoban with Edith Baer, The Wonder of Hands, Parents Magazine, New York, 1970 © Courtesy of Miela Ford.

Robert Doisneau, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Compter en s’amusant [Counting While Having Fun], La Guilde du livre, Lausanne / Éditions Clairefontaine, Lausanne, 1955 © Courtesy of Atelier Robert Doisneau and Gamma Rapho.

Women, the object, and the child

This female centrality is no accident. “The question of education has largely been carried by mothers, by women. And beyond that, it’s women who specialize in child portraiture,” the director recalls. “Those two factors together explain why women hold such an important place in children’s photo publishing.”

What actually distinguishes a children’s photobook from one made for adults, beyond its intended readership? For Anne Lacoste, the difference lies less in the subject than in the use. “Photographing children doesn’t automatically mean you know how to make a book for children,” she says. “Accessibility really matters here, adapting to how a child’s mind works and thinks.” She adds: “Just because a photograph shows children doesn’t mean every child will identify with it. Something has to happen at the level of the child, a kind of ownership of the object.”

A lesson that applies to adults too, she believes. Books designed to awaken perception, or those that support language learning among non-native speakers, are in fact aimed at everyone. “More recently, there have been many books that are more participatory, that encourage creation, that are more playful, and that appeal to adults and children alike,” she observes.

Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, “P is for Painting”, Humans and Other Animals, Tate Publishing, London, 2015 © Courtesy of Late Estate of Broomberg and Chanarin.

Handling to understand

The Arles exhibition pushes this logic to its limit, pairing each section with a hands-on activity designed from the very start of the project, in collaboration with the teams in charge of artistic and cultural outreach. Putting the pages of a Nagano book back in order, drawing in the manner of Tomi Ungerer, matching photographs with Karel Capek’s sketches: for Anne Lacoste, these games reflect a precise pedagogical conviction. “Theoretical understanding needs to be enriched by practice, to really have the experience and understand how things are made,” she explains. “Sometimes something looks easy, and it’s only by doing it yourself that you realize it isn’t as simple as it seems.”

The “Photographism” section, meanwhile, claims the legacy of the postwar European avant-gardes, Dadaism and Constructivism chief among them, through photomontage and the photogram. “One of the distinctive traits of the children’s photobook is that photography is also a material you cut up, that you combine with drawing,” Anne Lacoste points out, citing in particular Alexander Rodchenko’s staged scenes with paper figurines.

William Wondriska, preparatory spread for All by Myself, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1963 © Courtesy of William A. Wondriska Marital Trust.

This formal freedom finds its counterpart in the exhibition’s own design. Entirely eco-designed, it will travel until 2028 across 6 venues and 5 countries without a single nail or screw. The furniture, made of certified solvent-free local wood, assembles like a modular construction set, more than 530 pieces able to fit inside a single semi-trailer. “We tried to keep the volume as small as possible,” Anne Lacoste notes, adding that fair payment was also ensured for the 104 authors of the works on show, whatever their contribution.

The exhibition was also designed with maximum accessibility in mind: audio descriptions and tactile images for every section, a standard the Institut now applies to all of its exhibitions. “The Institut’s ambition really is a critical, sensitive reading of photography,” she recalls. “That means adapting to the public.” Asked what she hopes children will take away from their visit, Anne Lacoste rejects any didactic ambition. “It’s not necessarily about learning something. It’s more about encouraging people to look, or to look differently. And also about encouraging creation.”

“R comme Regarder. Le livre photo jeunesse” (R for Looking. The Children’s Photobook) is on view from July 6 to October 4, 2026, at the Espace Van Gogh, as part of the Rencontres d’Arles festival.