Paris galleries that show only photography

Map of 10 locations in Paris, France

Photography in Paris is not confined to a department inside a bigger museum: it has its own buildings, and some of them were something else first, from a tennis court in the Tuileries to a dance hall behind Place de Clichy and a set of public showers by the Canal Saint-Martin. This list gathers the Paris rooms where the whole programme is photographic, institutions and dealer galleries side by side, with the practical detail that decides whether a visit works: who founded them, what the space used to be, when the doors are open and whether there is anything to pay.

Places in this collection

  • Les Douches — Installed since 2006 in former public showers near the Canal Saint-Martin, at 5, rue Legouvé, the gallery shows historical and current phot…
  • Camera Obscura — Didier Brousse ran a printing and framing workshop before opening this gallery in 1993, which shows in how the work is presented: print qua…
  • Fait & Cause — The association Pour que l'esprit vive opened this space at 58, rue Quincampoix in 1997 and has kept it on social and environmental photogr…
  • Fisheye Gallery — The gallery arm of Fisheye magazine has been a few steps from the Canal Saint-Martin since 2016, at 2, rue de l'Hôpital Saint-Louis, and it…
  • Galerie Esther Woerdehoff — Set up in 1996 in a former workshop in the Montparnasse quarter, at 36, rue Falguière, the gallery follows its founder's own collecting eye…
  • Bigaignon — The gallery calls itself a photo-sensitive contemporary art gallery, and the distinction is real: what hangs here tends to interrogate the…
  • La Galerie Rouge — The same address on rue du Pont-Louis-Philippe has been a photography gallery since 1975, when it opened as Agathe Gaillard's. It represent…
  • Polka — In the Marais since 2007 at 12, rue Saint-Gilles, the gallery attached to Polka magazine spreads two exhibition spaces across 300 m² and ke…
  • Quai de la Photo — A barge of more than 1,000 m² moored at Port de la Gare, below the François-Mitterrand library, opened in June 2023 and given over to conte…
  • Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson — Cartier-Bresson set the foundation up in May 2003 with his wife Martine Franck and their daughter Mélanie, to keep both photographers' bodi…

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