Christie’s announced the sale of the Collection Roger Thérond, Une passion française to be held in Paris in September 2026. At a time when France is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of photography, it constitutes one of the most eagerly awaited events in the photography world — and a vibrant tribute to the man who, better than anyone, defended the nobility of the medium.
New York gets the first look: a selection of photographs is on view starting today at Christie’s New York until April 15, followed by Arles in July, and finally Paris prior to the sale in September.
He had a gift. That of seeing what others were not yet looking at. For more than half a century at the helm of Paris Match, Roger Thérond taught France how to look — how to feel the shock of an image. But behind the public figure, the legendary editor, there was another man: a solitary hunter, a mad lover, a collector of a rare kind. It is this man that Christie’s reveals today. Long kept secret, 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 Une passion française. Kept out of sight by Roger Thérond’s family since his death in 2001, the collection has lost none of its mythical aura; the rare loans of works by Le Gray or Dora Maar have doubtless only amplified it.
Comprising several hundred images, the collection will be offered in three sales. The auction offers an unprecedented series of masterpieces of 19th- and 20th-century French photography.
Roger Therond : “l’œil, la chasse, la sérénité”
For more than fifty years, at the head of Paris Match, from his office overlooking the Champs-Élysées, he shaped a new way of telling the world. The image no longer illustrated the event: it revealed it, fixed it, engraved it in the collective memory. His eye was feared, admired, sought after. Very quickly, he was given the nickname “the Eye” because of his exceptional intuition for spotting the most striking images.
With his friend Daniel Filipacchi, he helped found and lead the largest press group in Europe. His flagship, Paris Match — to which he gave the famous slogan “the weight of words, the shock of photographs” — profoundly marked popular culture by defining an entire era. He published Henri Cartier-Bresson in the 1950s, and Sebastião Salgado or Helmut Newton as early as the 1980s. The man who had handled, scanned, and cropped tens of thousands of photographs had one demand: “the most important photographs must arrive first at Paris Match, and on my desk…”
The first edition of Mois de la photo in 1980 and the creation of the Visa pour l’image festival in 1989 are also part of his legacy. By forging lasting ties with artistic and cultural circles, he explored every field, from fashion photography to art photography and, of course, photojournalism.
Among the first to understand and collect photography as an art form in its own right, Roger Thérond bequeathed to the world an unrivalled visual memory. Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn saw in him a singular eye and a unique sensitivity. In recognition of this international stature, the International Center of Photography in New York honored him “for having shaped photojournalism in Europe,” and in 2001 he received the Getty Images Lifetime Achievement Award.
But it was in secrecy that he built his masterpiece. From the late 1960s onward, he began amassing prints and something even rarer: complete albums of early photographs, the most precious treasures in the history of 19th-century photography — as an explorer with a flashlight at dawn in the Paris flea markets, with booksellers, with major collectors such as Georges Sirot and André Duchesne, international dealers, or prestigious public sales. He himself said he had “gone through the collector’s three stages: play, the hunt, and today serenity.” A serenity won over thirty years of quest, guided by a single compass: “what pleased me, surprised me, or moved me.” And he added, with the tenderness peculiar to great lovers: “I love touching an old photograph. The calotype in its mist, salted paper in its roughness have charms that flatter the fingertips.”
Trois ventes pour une des collections les plus importantes dans le monde
What Christie’s is offering today is a complete journey through a century of images. From the first daguerreotypes of the 1840s to the surrealist experiments of the interwar years, the collection unfolds a free, demanding, and profoundly personal traversal. It embraces two major axes: the pioneers of the 19th century and the avant-garde of the 20th. Here we find Gustave Le Gray’s seascapes made in Sète — an intimate homage to his native city — Félix Teynard’s journeys to the East, Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s first snapshots — whom Thérond nicknamed “the blessed one” —, Man Ray’s experiments — “the frenetic one” — and Maurice Tabard’s investigations — “the secret one”. Alongside Dora Maar, Florence Henri, Germaine Krull, Eugène Atget, Edouard Baldus, Charles Nègre, Guy Bourdin, Eli Lotar, and Helmut Newton, the collection constitutes an unrivalled pictorial memory in which Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, or Peggy Guggenheim sometimes emerge.
A testament to its historical importance: as early as 1985, the Musée d’Orsay had acquired exceptional pieces, among them Baron Gros’s daguerreotype depicting a bas-relief of the Acropolis of Athens. Since then, the landmark sale of the André Jammes collection in London in 1999 had set new records for historic photography. The dispersal of the Thérond collection belongs to that lineage — and surpasses it.
“This collection constitutes a sensitive journey through the history of photography, an invitation to rediscover it in all its richness, depth, and beauty through a unique, passionate, inhabited gaze. Never has a collection of this quality been presented in Paris. It speaks to all collectors, far beyond the world of photography alone. It reveals the pioneers of an era, the first images, the founding gestures. It reminds us how a collection can embody a vision, define an era, transmit a way of seeing.” comments Elodie Morel-Bazin, Director of the Photography Department, Europe, Christie’s.
Christie’s : Collection Roger Thérond, Une passion française
Sale information. Further detailed information will be released soon
Exhibition from 10 to 15 April 2026 at Christie’s in New York
Exhibition from 6 to 19 July in Arles
Exhibition from 10 to 15 September 2026 at Christie’s in Paris
Sale live on 15 and 16 September 2026 and online, from 8 to 17 September 2026
