Photo Elysée in Lausanne is preparing a substantial presentation devoted to Ella Maillart, the Swiss travel writer, photographer and explorer whose archives have been held by the museum since 1988. Titled 'Ella Maillart. Récits photographiques', the exhibition runs from 6 March to 1 November 2026 and is shown with free admission. The museum says the project marks Maillart’s recognition in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register in 2025 and brings together a selection of the images and texts from her travels in Asia during the 1930s.
The exhibition focuses on four major journeys Maillart made across Asia between 1930 and 1939. According to Photo Elysée, she crossed the USSR, China, Afghanistan and Iran, documenting political and social transformations as she went. Her route took in the Sovietization of Central Asia, the changing landscape of China after the fall of the imperial regime, and the creation of Manchukuo, the Japanese-controlled state in Manchuria. The museum presents these travels as a period record in which photographs and annotated writings developed together.
Photo Elysée’s own relationship to Maillart’s work gives the exhibition added institutional weight. The museum says it has preserved her photographic archive since 1988, when Maillart entrusted it with several thousand images. Her written archive is held by the Bibliothèque de Genève, and both institutions continue to preserve and promote her legacy with the Fondation Ella Maillart. The museum has previously devoted exhibitions to her work in 1990, 1997 and 2003.
The display also comes after UNESCO added the fonds of Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach to its Memory of the World register. Photo Elysée describes this distinction as an international acknowledgment of the historical and cultural value of the archives, as well as of Maillart’s importance in the history of photography and journalism. In the exhibition text, the museum underlines that Maillart’s images, together with her writings, offer a unique witness to a pivotal moment in Asian and world history.
Biographically, the museum presents Maillart as a figure whose travels were central to both her life and practice. Born in Geneva in 1903, she traveled widely in the 20th century and later guided trips to Asia from 1957 to 1987 while also giving lectures illustrated with her photographs. Photo Elysée notes that she travelled to the Soviet Union in 1930, to Russian Turkestan in 1932, and to Manchuria in 1934, where she worked as a journalist for the French daily 'Le Petit Parisien'. In 1935 she met the British writer and lieutenant Peter Fleming in Beijing, before setting out with him on the Xinjiang route to India.
The exhibition includes works such as 'Sans titre' (1935), 'Bergères tangoutes au 108 tresses' (1935), 'Un Karakirghize avec des lunettes chinoises' (1932), 'Marché devant la madrasa Chir Arab' (1932), 'La route japonaise en construction' (1934), 'Jour de foire à Weichang, dans l'ancienne province de Jehol, découverte de la lanterne magique' (1934), 'Gare intermédiaire' (1934) and 'Dans la Cité Interdite, 1935'. Photo Elysée also lists an outdoor parallel exhibition in La Tour-de-Peilz, scheduled from 24 July to 27 September 2026 and devoted to Ella Maillart and Hermine de Saussure.
