L'histoire cherche son lieu -
Anaëlle Vanel

The starting point for the exhibition is a photograph that is now on display in two locations: the History Reading Room at the Diderot Library in Lyon and the Marc Bloch Centre in Berlin. The image depicts a ‘non-place’ of memory: the spot where the manuscript of Marc Bloch’s L’Étrange défaite was buried. It is a ‘non-place’ because, by its very nature, it is removed from view and defies any specific designation; there is a tension between what is perceived and the meaning attributed to it.

Here, through this concept, distant spaces and times resonate with one another. Through a series of photographs whose subjects lie on the margins of the visible, of mainstream narratives or unambiguous interpretations, the aim is to gauge the gaps: that between history and its setting, between what reaches us and what was, between the possible and the probable. It is within this distance that the image comes into being.

Opening on Wednesday 30 September 2026, 6.00 pm

As part of the ‘DILEXIT VERITATEM – MARC BLOCH Year –’ programme

This exhibition forms part of the joint programme organised by the Marc Bloch Centre (Berlin) and the ENS de Lyon to mark Marc Bloch’s induction into the Panthéon in June 2026.

Full programme: https://www.ens-lyon.fr/lecole/annee-marc-bloch/marc-bloch-combattant-de-la-verite

Anaëlle Vanel is an artist. She graduated from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts (ENSBA) in Lyon in 2014 and was also a visiting student in Christopher Williams’s class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2018. She has exhibited in France and abroad (IAC, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes; Galerie Michèle Didier, Paris; Villa Medici, Rome; Centre de la Photographie, Geneva; Kunsthalle der Sparkasse, Leipzig; Natural History Museum, Florence) and her works are held in several public (CNAP; IAC, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes; FRAC Île-de-France) and private collections.