Actualités

Co-produced by the Centre Historique Minier and the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie (MPP), which houses one of Europe’s largest collections of photographic archives, and presented as part of the Bicentenary of Photography, the exhibition ‘The Mine Through the Lens’ invites visitors to discover how photographers have depicted coal mines and miners. For nearly one hundred and fifty years, from 1874 to 2023, leading figures such as Paul Nadar, Willy Ronis and Jean-Claude Gautrand took an interest in this world. Through three hundred works from the MPP’s collections, the exhibition explores the many facets of the mining world: work and daily life, social struggles, disasters, changes to the landscape, and the evocation of a world whose disappearance seemed inevitable.

This exhibition has been awarded the ‘Bicentenary of Photography’ label by the Ministry of Culture and forms part of the official Bicentenary programme.