The Art of Photography in Children’s Books Explored in New Exhibition

Dec 25, 2025

Pesala Bandara

A group of seven children dressed as acrobats form a human pyramid on a dark stage, while the left page shows the number 7 with yellow chicks and a French poem about seven children playing circus acrobats. — Robert Doisneau, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Compter en s’amusant. La Guilde du livre, Lausanne, Éditions Clairefontaine, Lausanne, 1955. © ATELIER ROBERT DOISNEAU, GAMMA RAPHO

A new exhibition explores the history of photography in children’s books from their rise in the 1930s to the present day.

Running from September 19, 2025, to February 1, 2026, L is for Look, an exhibition at the Photo Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, focuses on how photographic books have shaped children’s learning, imagination, and engagement with the world. Most of the works on display come from the Photo Elysée library, one of Europe’s largest collections of photography books, holding over 30,000 titles.

Six black-and-white photos show playful kittens leaping, jumping, and pouncing energetically against a plain background. Some kittens are mid-air, while others are interacting in pairs. — Ylla (Camilla Koffler, known as), 85 cats, La Guilde du livre, Lausanne, 1952 © Pryor Dodge

A sandwich decorated to look like a face with olive eyes, salami tongue, and cheese teeth sits on a plate next to a white mug with a cartoon dinosaur and hot chocolate inside. — Reinhard Matz, Frühstück (Breakfast), 1995-2000 © Reinhard Matz

Three young children walk along a paved path in front of a house. The girl in the center wears a yellow dress and carries a green bucket, while the two boys beside her wear casual clothes and appear to be talking or eating. — Enzo Arnone, Ciccì Coccò, 2025 © Enzo Arnone

According to the exhibition, in the 1930s, children’s photobooks were primarily educational, designed to enrich vocabulary and knowledge. Their graphic and material design — including spiral binding, interactive features, and fold-out pages — encouraged a participatory approach to learning. After World War II, photobooks evolved to support children’s understanding of the world and differences among people, exploring lifestyles, origins, and disabilities while encouraging emotional expression.

A smiling girl claps her hands, while on the opposite page, two hands create a bird shadow on a wall. Text reads: "Hands do many different things...Clap for joy, flap like wings. — Tana Hoban avec Edith Baer, The Wonder of Hands, Éditions Parents Magazine, New York, 1970 © Miela Ford

A child blows on a dandelion in a black and white photo on the left; on the right, there is a small abstract black and white striped square centered on a blank background. — Tana Hoban, Look Again!, Macmilan Publishing Company, New York, 1971
© Estate of Tana Hoban

From the 1950s onwards, under the influence of cinema, television, and live performance, children’s photobooks expanded into fiction. Through image sequencing, the books became narrative mediums, while photography gained artistic recognition as a tool for subjective expression. Today, advances in digital tools and mixed media have led to new approaches combining drawing and photography in children’s illustration.

A large red letter "B" and lowercase "b" appear on the left side with the word "ball" written in English and French. On the right, four balls, including a striped one, sit on a surface inside a net. — Emmanuel Sougez, Alphabet, Éditions Antoine Roche, Paris, 1932. All rights
reserved

A young person in a buttoned shirt raises one hand, pointing upward, with a yellow squiggle drawn above their finger on a plain background. — Adam Broomberg et Oliver Chanarin, A-Z Humans and Other Animals, 2016 © Late Estate of Broomberg and Chanarin

Following its presentation in Lausanne, the exhibition L is for Look will tour Europe, visiting the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles, the Photographers’ Gallery in London, U.K., the Centre National de l’Audiovisuel in Luxembourg, Foto Arsenal in Vienna, Australia, and concluding in 2028 at the Institut pour la Photographie in Lille, France.

Image credits: All photos courtesy of Photo Elysée.

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