Internationally recognized, the Musée de l'Elysée is one of the most important museums entirely devoted to photography.

Photo Elysée is one of the most important museums entirely dedicated to the photographic medium. Each year, we produce demanding exhibitions, distribute reference editorial content, design innovative events and offer events open to all.

Since its creation in 1985 as a "museum for photography", Photo Elysée has been questioning the permanent reinvention of the medium through the great figures who have marked its history by imagining new ways of seeing or making people see, while revealing in a privileged way the emerging photography which, through unseen views, bears witness to the world of today and prefigures that of tomorrow. In other words: to cover all the subjects of photography, to discover them sometimes, to make them rediscover especially.

The museum's collection of more than 1,200,000 phototypes covers the entire field of photography, from the first processes dating from the 1840s to the digital image. It includes numerous complete photographic collections or archives, notably those of Sabine Weiss, Jan Groover, René Burri, Ella Maillart, Nicolas Bouvier, Charlie Chaplin, Gertrude Fehr, Hans Steiner and Olivier Föllmi.

In June 2022, we will reopen our doors in the heart of Plateforme 10, Lausanne's new arts district, in a building designed by the Portuguese architects Aires Mateus and shared with the mudac. With a total surface area of nearly 3,800 square meters, our exhibition spaces, whose scenography will be designed by Studio Adrien Gardère, will host, in parallel with temporary exhibitions, a free exhibition of our collections, a free access mediation space and the Lab Elysée, an innovative space for digital experimentation.


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