Ella Maillart. Photographic Encounters

Photo Elysée pays tribute to writer, photographer and traveler Ella Maillart (1903–1997) with an exhibition that looks back on her time in Central Asia in the 1930s.

The show celebrates the unique career of one of history’s great travelers, whose body of work was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2025 in recognition of its universal significance. Featuring photographs and writings that trace Maillart’s four major journeys in the 1930s – through the USSR, China, Afghanistan and Iran – the exhibition highlights the documentary value of her work and its role in building understanding of the cultures she visited

Maillart was born in Geneva in 1903. She established herself as an important travel writer and reporter at an early age. In the 1930s, guided by a rare independence of mind, she journeyed extensively through Central Asia, taking an avid interest in the cultures and peoples she encountered along the way. The hundreds of photos she took during her time there stand as an invaluable visual record of her travels. After returning to Switzerland, she wrote books and gave talks about her experiences.

Maillart’s archives, comprising her photographs, films and writings, are held by Photo Elysée and the Bibliothèque de Genève. In April 2025, they were added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register alongside the archives of Annemarie Schwarzenbach, which are under the stewardship of the Swiss National Library. This major recognition, achieved through a joint initiative by the three Swiss institutions, testifies to the magnitude of the contribution these two women made to travel writing and photography – a genre that, in their day, was largely dominated by men.