Librairie 7L

7L Correspondances, Photography

“Une cartographie de la guerre” by Paolo Pellegrin (Magnum Photos ) in collaboration with Annalisa D’Angelo, Chiara Pellegrin and Bianca Ossicini

By appointment only until July 4, 2026
Contact: [email protected]

This installation is created as part of the 7L “Correspondances” programme, in which artists are invited to explore the collection of Karl Lagerfeld’s library and reinterpret it through their own perspective.

“The library felt, from the very first threshold, like an initiatory space. You understand immediately that you have entered a private realm: the geography of an imagination. There is no definite order here, it is not you who finds the books – it is the books that find you.” Paolo Pellegrin

Echoing the richness and diversity of the 7L library collection, Paolo Pellegrin moves through its shelves as one might traverse a territory. In the course of this exploration, he photographs the images that inhabit the books, from soldiers of the world wars to creatures drawn from medieval bestiaries. The images thus extracted from the pages of the 7L library are layered with his own photographs of contemporary conflict zones. This visual construction takes shape through his collaboration with the artist Chiara Pellegrin and the curator Annalisa D’Angelo. These fragments are
reassembled into a new cartography, embodied in “Jeu des fortifications ou de la guerre”, an 1812 variant of the “Jeu de l’oie”, reproduced in the book “Cartes et figures de la terre”.
The spaces on the board become meeting points between field and archive, uncharted territories where a representation of conflict takes form. The game appears as a miniature of reality, where each playing piece extends the player within a space that is at once symbolic and ritualized. Governed by chance, the journey becomes a mirror of existence itself, with its obstacles and setbacks not as an end, but as an invitation to begin again.

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7L Correspondances, Reading

“L’Infini des mots” is a programme of literary and musical readings devised and directed this season by actor, movie and theatre director François Marthouret.
The last chapter of the series intertwined different characters from William Shakespeare’s plays performed by Anne Alvaro and François Marthouret accompanied by Greg Zlap at the harmonica. An inspiring way to (re)discover major classical texts like “Measure for Measure ”, “Hamlet” or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

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7L Reading Room with Anne Heilbronn

Anne Heilbronn , Vice President of Sotheby’s France and Senior Director of the Books and Manuscripts department, shared her love for books with Laurence Delamare, Head of 7L. From searching, unveiling, and selling rare books and prestigious libraries to her passion for the French 19th century literature, she was surrounded by friends and colleagues who joined her for the evening.

Writer Antoine Compagnon discussed Stendhal and Proust, actress Géraldine Pailhas read love poems from Apollinaire while Laurence Heilbronn selected an excerpt from “Deux étés 44” by François Heilbronn. Guillaume Fau shared his expertise working in the Manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, with actor and screenwriter Christopher Thompson reading a letter from Alfred Dreyfus, and Sotheby’s expert and Director Benoit Puttemans one of the last letters from Rimbaud to his sister. Finally, Thierry Klifa discussed Claude Sautet’s films and the long-lasting impact of his cinema on his niece Anne Heilbronn.