Here we showcase the highlights from Lausanne-related exhibitions and displays from collections around the world.
Agence Rol Collection
Founded in 1904, the French photographic agency Agence Rol initially specialized in covering sporting events, but soon diversified into other activities, including covering international conferences such as Lausanne. Agence Rol’s archive ended up in the BnF and has since been digitized by Gallica. Unlike artists such as Derso and Kelèn (see below), able to roam as they pleased, photographers were rarely allowed inside conference hotels. As well as the boredom of hours spent waiting outside hotels, the photographs’ labels themselves indicate which figures were immediately recognizable, and which were not. Several are labelled simply “Russian delegate?”, indicating just how unfamiliar Soviet diplomats were in 1922-3.
The Derso & Kelèn Collection
Hungarian Jewish exiles both, the artists Alois Derso and Emery Kelèn met in Lausanne in 1922, and soon established themselves as a satirical double act, capturing the goings-on inside various conference venues in the cartoons they sold to newspapers across the world, as well as in the volume they produced to commemorate the conference: Guignol à Lausanne. Issued in 1923 in a numbered edition of 300, we are grateful to the Peace Palace Library in The Hague for making scans of their copy available.
The Lausanne Project 