14 November 2026 | Paris | full auction details

Three sales in November in Paris for a legendary collection. Christie’s presents Collection Roger Thérond, Une passion française, to be offered in Paris in November 2026. At a moment when France is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of photography, this landmark sale stands as one of the most highly anticipated events in the photography world — and a vibrant tribute to the man who, more than any other, championed the nobility of the medium.

Roger Thérond possessed a rare gift: the ability to see what others had not yet begun to notice. For more than half a century at the helm of Paris Match, he taught France how to look — how to experience the shock of an image. Yet behind the public figure and legendary editor existed another man: a solitary hunter, a passionate observer and collector of a rare kind. It is this more intimate figure whom Christie’s reveals today.

Long kept out of public view, the collection caused a sensation in 1999 at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, where a selection of 240 works was unveiled for the first time under the title A French Passion. Preserved by Roger Thérond’s family since his death in 2001, the collection has lost none of its mythical aura; if anything, the rare loans of works by figures such as Gustave Le Gray and Dora Maar have only amplified it.

Comprising several hundred images, the collection is offered across three sales and presents an unprecedented ensemble of masterpieces from 19th‑ and 20th‑century French photography.

Three sales for one of the most important collections in the world. Christie’s presents a complete journey through a century of images. From the earliest daguerreotypes of the 1840s to the Surrealist experiments of the interwar period, the collection unfolds as a free, exacting and deeply personal exploration. It brings together two principal axes: the pioneers of the 19th century and the avant-garde of the 20th.

One finds here Gustave Le Gray’s seascapes made in Sète — an intimate tribute to his birthplace — Félix Teynard’s journeys to the Orient, the earliest snapshots by Jacques‑Henri Lartigue, whom Thérond affectionately nicknamed ‘the blessed’, the experiments of Man Ray — ‘the frenzied’ — and the investigations of Maurice Tabard — ‘the secretive’. Alongside Dora Maar, Florence Henri, Germaine Krull, Eugène Atget, Édouard Baldus, Charles Nègre, Guy Bourdin, Eli Lotar and Helmut Newton, the collection forms an unparalleled pictorial memory. Within it, figures such as Victor Hugo, Jean‑Paul Sartre and Peggy Guggenheim occasionally appear.

Viewing
7 Nov 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
8 Nov 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
9 Nov 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
10 Nov 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
11 Nov 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
12 Nov 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
13 Nov 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
14 Nov 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM