Following a positive vote by the Paris Council, the City of Paris has just granted Photononstop Group, for a period of five years, the cultural promotion and commercial exploitation of the digital reproductions of two heritage photographic collections: Roger-Viollet and France-Soir.
Photononstop Group will have the right to use Roger-Viollet brand name and website and will keep the current Roger-Viollet’s team as well as the Parisian office.
During the year 2020, an exhibition space dedicated to heritage photography will open in Roger-Viollet’s current Parisian offices located in the heart of the famous Saint-Germain des Prés district.
The Roger-Viollet and France-Soir collections
Created in 1938 by the journalist Hélène Roger-Viollet and her husband Jean Fischer, Roger-Viollet agency was taken over by the City of Paris under exceptional circumstances. In 1985, Fischer slit his 83-year-old wife’s throat and tried to make his crime look like suicide in the agency premises before killing himself in prison
Jacques Chirac, then Mayor of Paris, accepted the legacy of the Roger-Viollet photographic collection with a mission to promote it (nearly six million photographs, including many well-known or very old photographs).
The City of Paris recovered the daily newspaper France-Soir archives in 1987, when the daily newspa- per moved from its historic building. The City of Paris then bought the archive’s second part after the newspaper’s bankruptcy in 2012. France-Soir was created in 1944 and was one of the largest daily news- papers by circulation in France in the 60’s. Its photographic archives cover more than fifty years of world history through 6.5 million images.
«La Parisienne de Photographie» was created in 2005 to preserve, digitize and promote the photo- graphic heritage of the Roger-Viollet and France-Soir collections. Despite the payment of subsidies by the City, it found itself in a difficult financial situation.
Originals negatives and prints of both collections remain the property of the City of Paris and are kept at the City of Paris Historical Library.
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About Photononstop Created in 2000, from the merger of two photographic agencies, Photononstop Group is the first independent French group of photo agencies. It is managed by its two co-founders: Gilles Taquet and Christian Delannoy. Key dates:
Gilles Taquet is president of SNAPIG (French Association of stock photo libraries) and is part of CEPIC (Coordination of European Picture Agencies Stock, Press and Heritage). |
