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In September 1919, the day after the signing of an agreement between France and Poland, many Polish workers arrived in the mining basin in the north of France. Kasimir Zgorecki belongs to this Polish diaspora. In 1922, he left the Ruhr where his father worked as a miner, and settled up in Rouvroy in the Pas-de-Calais. Trained boilermaker, he only worked in the mines for six months before turning to professional photography.

In 1924, he took over the studio and the bookstore of his brother-in-law who was photographer and introduced him to the basics of the technique. The interwar was a particularly intense period of Kasimir Zgorecki’s activity which experienced a meteoric rise. He took pleasure in portraying Polish emigrants who went far from their country, keeping track of their intimate history, immortalizing their personal success, making their existence palpable and revealing their daily life both sober and touching.

The exhibition presents about a hundred black and white photographs witnessing the life of this community of Polish emigrants, seeking both to show its capacity to integrate and to succeed, and to keep alive its traditions.