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Photo exhibition : A JOURNEY ACROSS CHINA IN THE 1930s

Exhibition of photographs by Ella Maillart.

Lianzhou, Guangdong Province, China, 19 December 2024 to 4 February 2025


The exhibition includes some 40 photos taken by Ella Maillart when she crossed China in 1935. It has been organized by Photo Elysée and LIANZHOU FOTO, the country's leading photography festival, created fifteen years ago. The 2024 edition is themed ‘Looking Back & Forward’. It features some 3,000 works by 311 photographers from all over the world. Lianzhou is also the seat of the first and most important photography museum in China.


Introductory text :

“I write with the eyes of the photographer. With eyes that just love to see. To see this incredible mystery that is life.”

Ella Maillart

Swiss explorer, writer and photographer Ella Maillart (1903-1997) shared her travel stories, experiences and observations in numerous books illustrated with her photographs.

Born in Geneva, Switzerland, she grew up on the shores of Lake Geneva and developed an early interest in sport and competition. She skied in the Swiss Alps and played hockey, founding the first women's hockey club in Switzerland. The proximity of the lake also gave her a taste for sailing. Between 1923 and 1924 she sailed the Mediterranean with an all-female crew. In the summer of 1924, in Paris, she was the first woman in the world to skipper a sailing boat in Olympic competition. From 1929, Ella Maillart began to travel, her first destination being Russia, where she observed young people in communist society. She later travelled to Asia. For her time, Ella Maillart was a daring woman, not afraid to explore areas off the beaten tourist track. Between 1934 and 1935, Ella Maillart travelled to China, first in Manchuria, then accompanied by the British writer Peter Flemming through the provinces of western China. On foot, by train, by lorry, on horseback or on camel, they crossed Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai and the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur. Ella Maillart observed and took numerous photographs, providing a unique record of regions that were difficult to access in the 1930s. She wrote about them in her book Forbidden Journey: From Pekin to Kashmir, published in 1937.

This tireless and intrepid woman remains an example of courage, thirst for knowledge and the desire to push back the limits. The photographic archives she built up on her travels, preserved by Photo Elysée, Switzerland's museum of photography, document her travels and encounters and help to build a collective memory.


The town of Lianzhou in 1935.   © Succession Ella Maillart and Photo Elysée, Lausanne.
The town of Lianzhou in 1935. © Succession Ella Maillart and Photo Elysée, Lausanne.




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© Association Les Amis d'Ella Maillart, 2024

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