In 1956, photographer Harry Callahan (1912-1999), then director of the photography department at the Institute of Design in Chicago in the United States, received a grant from the Graham Foundation. On the advice of Edward Steichen, he left for Europe and stayed in Aix-en-Provence from September 1957 to July 1958 where he designed a series of studies on urban views, nature, and many portraits of his wife Eleanor.

Thirty-six years later, discovering the construction site of the European House of Photography in Paris, Harry Callahan revisits his archives, selects one hundred and thirty vintage prints, under the name of “French Archives”, and donates the whole at the new museum.